Glossary

Total value of all circulating coins, calculated as price times supply.

Total trading volume across exchanges in the last 24 hours.

The highest price ever recorded for a cryptocurrency.

The lowest price ever recorded for a cryptocurrency.

The number of coins currently in circulation, or the maximum that will ever exist.

A coin's share of the total crypto market capitalization.

How easily an asset can be bought or sold without large price impact.

A wallet large enough that its trades can move market prices materially.

The difference between expected and actual execution price of a trade.

A cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value, typically pegged 1:1 to a fiat currency.

Contracts to buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price on a future date.

Total number of outstanding derivative contracts not yet settled.

Periodic fee exchanged between long and short perpetual swap traders.

Proportion of traders holding long vs. short positions.

Borrowing funds to amplify potential returns on a trade.

A futures contract with no expiry date, kept near spot via funding rates.

The price difference between a futures contract and the spot price.

Forced closure of a leveraged position when margin falls below threshold.

Decentralized Finance — financial services on smart contracts without traditional intermediaries.

Aggregate value of assets deposited in DeFi protocols.

Decentralized exchange allowing peer-to-peer crypto trading without intermediaries.

Automated market maker that uses liquidity pools instead of order books.

Earning rewards by providing liquidity or staking tokens in DeFi protocols.

A smart-contract pool of tokens used to facilitate decentralized trading.

Temporary loss from providing liquidity when token prices diverge.

DeFi platform that enables borrowing and lending of crypto assets.

A token granting holders voting rights over protocol decisions.

Staking tokens via a protocol that issues a tradable receipt token (LST).

Re-using already-staked ETH to secure additional services for extra yield, with stacked slashing risk.

Maximal Extractable Value — profit from reordering or including transactions within a block.

Transaction fee paid to validators on Ethereum-style chains, denominated in the chain's native token.

Unit of Ethereum gas pricing; 1 gwei equals 0.000000001 ETH (10⁻⁹ ETH).

A service that brings off-chain data onto a blockchain so smart contracts can use it.

Tokenized representations of off-chain assets — Treasuries, real estate, private credit, commodities.

A base-layer blockchain with its own native consensus, security model, and token.

A network built on top of a base blockchain to provide faster, cheaper transactions.

A Layer-2 scaling solution that batches transactions off-chain and posts a compressed summary back to L1.

A cryptographic proof that lets one party prove a statement without revealing the underlying value.

Splitting a blockchain into parallel partitions, each processing a fraction of total transactions.

Self-executing code deployed on a blockchain that runs deterministically without intermediaries.

A node operator on a Proof-of-Stake blockchain who stakes tokens to propose and validate blocks.

A decentralized application running on smart contracts rather than centralized servers.

The component of an L2 rollup that orders transactions and posts them to L1.

Remote Procedure Call — the HTTP/WebSocket interface through which wallets and apps query blockchain state.

The live production version of a blockchain — where real value moves and transactions are economically meaningful.

A blockchain environment that mirrors mainnet using free, valueless tokens — used for development and testing.

A cryptographic data structure enabling efficient proofs that an item belongs to a large set.

Architecture that separates execution, settlement, consensus, and data availability into specialized layers.

Ethereum standard for fungible tokens — interchangeable units like USDC, UNI, AAVE.

Ethereum standard for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) — unique tokens with distinct IDs and metadata.

Standard for "smart accounts" — wallets that are themselves contracts, enabling programmable transaction logic.

Measure of a project's code development pace on GitHub.

Individual code changes saved to a repository's version history.

Developers who have submitted code to a project's repository.

A non-backward-compatible protocol upgrade creating a new chain.

A backward-compatible protocol upgrade that tightens existing rules.

Scheduled reduction of block rewards by 50%, reducing new coin issuance.

The pool of pending transactions broadcast but not yet included in a block.

Total computational power securing a Proof-of-Work blockchain, in hashes per second.

Newly minted coins plus fees paid to whoever proposes a valid block.

Initial Coin Offering — fundraising via direct token sale to the public, peaked in 2017-2018.

Initial DEX Offering — token launch on a decentralized exchange or launchpad.

Initial Exchange Offering — token launch hosted by a centralized exchange.

Decentralized Autonomous Organization — governed by token-holder voting via smart contracts.

An off-chain governance vote — token holders sign messages with their wallet to vote without paying gas.

Non-Fungible Token — a unique cryptographic token representing ownership of a specific item.

A persistent, shared virtual environment with on-chain assets and decentralized worlds.

A vision of the internet built on decentralized blockchains and tokens, owned by users.

Blockchain-based games combining gameplay with financial primitives — tradable assets, token rewards, NFT economies.

Decentralized physical infrastructure — token incentives bootstrap real-world networks like wireless coverage, GPU compute, mapping.

A protocol that moves tokens or messages between independent blockchains.

Operating across multiple chains with separate deployments on each — different from omnichain.

Operating as a single application across multiple chains using cross-chain messaging to keep state synchronized.

Composite indicator measuring overall crypto market sentiment from 0 to 100.

Aggregated mood across social media regarding crypto assets.

Crypto-native term for long-term holding rather than trading; born from a 2013 forum typo.

Fear Of Missing Out — psychological pressure to buy assets that are rising sharply.

Free distribution of tokens to qualifying wallets, typically rewarding early users.

An investor who sells at the first sign of volatility — opposite of "diamond hands."

An investor who holds through massive drawdowns without selling.

Promoting a cryptocurrency to pump its price, typically without disclosing financial interest.

Key Opinion Leader — a crypto-specialized influencer used by projects to seed promotions.

A wallet requiring multiple signatures to authorize transactions.

A wallet that stores private keys completely offline, isolated from internet-connected devices.

Consumer Price Index measuring the average change in consumer prices.

The interest rate at which US banks lend reserves overnight.

Broad measure of money including cash, checking deposits, and near-money.

Index measuring the US dollar's value against a basket of major currencies.

A scam where developers drain investor funds by exploiting contract privileges or liquidity.

Trading with oneself to inflate volume and create false impressions of liquidity.