BitShares Asset Terminology

Dev's corner is a new section of BitShares News where developers involved with the BitShares project post technical related briefs and observations. In this first post, John Jones discusses terms used around BitShares assets.

The BitShares Core code distinguishes between BitShares assets in the following manner:

1. CORE – A base asset. Only one exists on the chain, and is created within the Genesis Block. On the BitShares mainnet, this is BTS. On the BitShares testnet, this is TEST.
2. User Issued Asset (UIA) – An asset issued by a BitShares account(user).
3. BitAsset – An asset that is backed by another. The backing asset is either CORE or an asset that itself is backed by CORE.

Some BitAssets have their parameters controlled by the BitShares Committee. These are distinguished by the ‘bit’ prefix(i.e. bitUSD, bitCNY, bitEUR, bitBTC). The price feeds for these assets come from committee members or witness members.

BitAssets could also be split into two types:

1. Market Pegged Asset (MPA) – Assets who’s price is based on external price feeds (as opposed to the internal DEX market), and backed by the CORE asset or another asset that itself is backed by CORE.
2. Prediction Market (PM) – Specialized BitAsset where total debt and total collateral are equal. Once a price feed (which will be between 0 and 1) is published, the market is globally settled.

Note: “Smartcoin” is an industry term with a few definitions. Those that refer to “smartcoins” on the BitShares platform are probably referring to Market Pegged Assets (MPA's).

Keep in mind that assets must have some sort of exchange rate to calculate fees. This rate is called the Core Exchange Rate (CER).

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