---
title: Terminology
description: Terminology specific to Ocean Protocol.
---

## Asset

A data set or data service.

## Publisher

Someone who has assets that they want to sell (or give away freely). An example is an almond distributor with 30 years of data about almond sales.

## Consumer

Someone who wants assets. An example is a data scientist working at an economic think tank.

## Marketplace

A service where publishers can list what assets they have, and consumers can see what's available then buy it (or get it for free).

## Keeper

A computer running a blockchain client (i.e. a blockchain node) where the associated blockchain network is running the Ocean Protocol keeper contracts (smart contracts).

## Aquarius

Ocean-specific software to help store and manage metadata about assets (but not assets themselves). Every marketplace must run an instance of Aquarius.

## Brizo

Ocean-specific software to help publishers manage consumer access to their assets.

## Secret Store

[Parity Secret Store](https://wiki.parity.io/Secret-Store).

## Squid

A set of software libraries to interact with Ocean network participants, including Keepers, Aquarius, Brizo, and Secret Store. The initial libraries are in Python, JavaScript and Java.

## Pleuston

An example marketplace frontend implemented using React and Squid-JavaScript.