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docs/content/concepts/terminology.md
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---
title: Terminology
description: Terminology specific to Ocean Protocol.
---
## Ocean Network
An *Ocean network* is any EVM-compatible network where [Ocean smart contracts](https://github.com/oceanprotocol/ocean-contracts) are deployed. These include:
- [Ethereum Mainnet](https://www.ethereum.org)
- Ethereum [test networks](/concepts/testnets/)
## Data Service, Data Asset, Datatoken
A *data service* may serve up a dataset or a compute service like Compute-to-Data. It's characterized by a url.
Each *data asset* is represented by an ERC20 *datatoken*.
You can access a data service if you send 1.0 datatokens to the Provider.
## Data Publisher, Provider
A *data publisher* is someone who has data services that they want to sell. An example is an almond distributor with 30 years of data about almond sales.
A *Provider* is a service that mediates access to assets on behalf of data owners or data service providers.
> Initially, most data publishers will also be Providers.
## Data Consumer
A *data consumer* is someone who buys a data asset, then consumes it by interacting with the *Provider*.
## Data Market
A data market is a service where publishers can list what assets they have, and consumers can see what's available then buy it.
## Metadata
Metadata is information about the data asset. In Ocean, metadata is stored on-chain, but marketplaces may have a local cache for faster search.