Concepts & Glossary

This page defines the core terms and concepts used throughout the GoChain documentation. Whether you are new to blockchain or just new to GoChain, this is a good place to start.

Platform Concepts

Organization

An organization is the fundamental unit of identity on the GoChain platform. It represents a company or institution participating in the network. Each organization owns its own nodes, manages its own users, and holds cryptographic certificates that prove its identity to other participants.

GoChain supports two tiers: - Starter Organization: Free tier. Supports one node and one Business Group. Suitable for evaluation and small projects. - Full Organization: Paid subscription. Supports multiple nodes and Business Groups for production workloads.

Business Group

A Business Group is a consortium of organizations that agree to collaborate on a shared blockchain network. It is the governance container for channels, chaincodes, and proposals.

All significant actions within a Business Group — such as creating a channel or deploying a chaincode — require a proposal that all member organizations must approve before the change takes effect.

Proposal

A proposal is a request to make a change to a Business Group's configuration or resources (e.g., create a channel, deploy a chaincode, add an organization). Member organizations must accept a proposal according to a predefined policy before it is executed. This ensures no single party can make unilateral changes to a shared network.

Infrastructure Provider

The cloud or on-premise environment where your organization's nodes run. GoChain supports: - External — your own servers - AWS, GCP, Azure — managed cloud VMs - Kubernetes (EKS) — container-based deployment on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service - GoLedger — fully managed by GoLedger (coming soon)

GoFabric Concepts

GoFabric manages networks built on Hyperledger Fabric, a permissioned blockchain framework.

Peer

A peer is a network node that hosts a copy of the ledger and executes chaincodes (smart contracts). Each organization deploys one or more peers to participate in channels. Peers validate and commit transactions proposed by clients.

Orderer

An orderer is a special node responsible for collecting endorsed transactions from peers, ordering them into blocks, and broadcasting those blocks back to all peers in a channel. Orderers do not execute chaincode or hold ledger data — they only guarantee transaction order.

Channel

A channel is a private, isolated communication path between a subset of organizations within a Business Group. Each channel has its own independent ledger. Organizations that are not members of a channel cannot see its transactions or data. A Business Group can have multiple channels for different use cases.

Chaincode

Chaincode is the term Hyperledger Fabric uses for smart contracts. It is code deployed to a channel that defines the business logic for creating, reading, updating, and deleting assets on the ledger. Chaincodes run inside secure containers on peer nodes.

Endorsement Policy

An endorsement policy defines which organizations must execute and sign a transaction before it is considered valid for a given chaincode. For example, a policy of "majority of organizations" requires more than half of the channel members to endorse every transaction.

Certificate Authority (CA)

A Certificate Authority issues digital certificates (X.509) to the participants of an organization — peers, orderers, and users. These certificates establish identity and enable secure, authenticated communication across the network. GoChain supports Root CA, Intermediate CA, and External CA configurations.

CCApi (Chaincode API)

A CCApi is a GoChain-managed REST API service that exposes a deployed chaincode's transactions as HTTP endpoints. It allows web and mobile applications to interact with the blockchain without needing to integrate directly with the Fabric SDK. A CCApi is scoped to a specific Business Group, channel, and chaincode.

GoInitus

GoInitus is a companion UI to the CCApi. It provides a web-based interface for interacting with a deployed chaincode's endpoints, useful for testing and administration.

NetApi

NetApi exposes network-level operations (such as organization management) as REST endpoints. It is used for programmatic management of the Fabric network.

GoBesu Concepts

GoBesu manages networks built on Hyperledger Besu, an enterprise-grade Ethereum client.

Node

A node is an instance of the Hyperledger Besu client participating in the network. Nodes validate transactions, store the blockchain state, and participate in consensus. A node can be either a validator (actively participates in consensus) or a non-validator (observes and syncs, but does not vote).

Validator

A validator node actively participates in the QBFT consensus process by proposing and voting on new blocks. A minimum number of validators must be online and agree for the network to produce new blocks. Adding or removing validators requires a governance vote among existing validators.

QBFT (Quorum Byzantine Fault Tolerance)

QBFT is the consensus algorithm used by GoBesu networks. It is a Byzantine Fault Tolerant protocol designed for permissioned networks. QBFT can tolerate up to ⌊(n-1)/3⌋ faulty nodes (where n is the number of validators) while still producing blocks. It provides immediate transaction finality — once a block is committed, it cannot be reversed.

Smart Contract

A smart contract on GoBesu is Ethereum-compatible code (Solidity) deployed to the blockchain. It defines logic for managing on-chain state. GoBesu supports building contracts from templates (ERC-20, ERC-721, ERC-1155 tokens) or uploading custom compiled contracts.

EthApi

An EthApi is a GoChain-managed service that exposes a deployed Ethereum smart contract's methods as REST endpoints. It allows applications to interact with contracts without managing a web3 wallet or RPC connection directly.

Ethereum Account

An Ethereum account is a cryptographic key pair (public + private key) used to sign transactions on a Besu network. The public address identifies the account on-chain. The private key must be kept secret — it cannot be recovered if lost. GoChain provides tools to create and download accounts.

Genesis Block

The genesis block is the first block of a blockchain. For GoBesu networks, the genesis configuration defines the initial network parameters: chain ID, consensus protocol, gas limits, and pre-funded accounts (allocations). These parameters are set once at network creation and cannot be changed.

Chain ID

A numeric identifier that distinguishes one Ethereum-compatible network from another. It prevents transaction replay attacks across different networks. Each GoBesu network has a unique chain ID chosen at setup time.

Gas Limit

The maximum amount of computational work (measured in "gas") that can be included in a single block. Higher gas limits allow more complex transactions per block but require more processing from validator nodes.

Transaction Hash (TX Hash)

A unique identifier for a transaction on the network, generated by hashing the transaction's contents. You can use the TX hash to look up a transaction's status, inputs, and outputs on a block explorer or via the EthApi.