Plain-English definitions of 85 essential terms across blockchain, DeFi, trading, and on-chain culture. Search, filter by category, or browse A–Z.
85 terms
Automated Market Maker — a smart contract that prices tokens algorithmically using a liquidity pool instead of an order book.
Read more →Annual Percentage Yield — the annualised return on an investment including the effect of compounding.
Read more →A large financial institution with a direct agreement to create and redeem ETF shares in bulk directly with the fund issuer.
Read more →Information or insight that provides an edge — allowing an investor to identify opportunities before the broader market.
Read more →A distribution of free tokens to wallet addresses, typically as a marketing tool or reward for early protocol users.
Read more →A distributed ledger that records transactions in chronologically linked blocks, secured by cryptography.
Read more →A batch of transactions bundled together and permanently added to the blockchain.
Read more →A delta-neutral strategy that profits from the spread between a spot position and its corresponding futures or perpetual contract.
Read more →A protocol enabling users to transfer tokens between two different blockchains or between L1 and L2.
Read more →A cheap, temporary data storage type introduced to Ethereum in March 2024, designed to make Layer 2 rollup data publication dramatically less expensive.
Read more →The rules a blockchain network uses to agree on the valid state of the ledger.
Read more →A centralised exchange — a company-operated platform where users deposit funds and trade via a traditional order book.
Read more →Assets locked as security against a loan, seized by the protocol if the borrower's position falls below the liquidation threshold.
Read more →The number of tokens currently tradeable in the market, excluding locked, vested, or burned tokens.
Read more →Decentralised Finance — financial services built on public blockchains, operating without traditional intermediaries.
Read more →A decentralised exchange where users trade directly from their wallets via smart contracts, with no custodian.
Read more →A settlement mechanism that links the transfer of an asset to the simultaneous transfer of payment, eliminating principal risk.
Read more →Decentralised Autonomous Organisation — a member-owned entity governed by smart contracts and on-chain voting.
Read more →The guarantee that transaction data has been published and is accessible to anyone who needs to reconstruct or verify the blockchain state.
Read more →Do Your Own Research — a reminder that individual investors are responsible for their own due diligence.
Read more →A change to a blockchain's protocol rules; soft forks are backwards-compatible, hard forks are not.
Read more →The point at which a transaction is considered irreversibly confirmed and cannot be altered or reversed.
Read more →An uncollateralised DeFi loan that must be borrowed and repaid within a single blockchain transaction.
Read more →A periodic payment between long and short perpetual futures holders that keeps the contract price aligned with spot.
Read more →Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt — negative sentiment (sometimes deliberately spread) intended to reduce confidence in an asset.
Read more →Fear Of Missing Out — anxiety-driven buying as an asset rises rapidly, often a sign of market overextension.
Read more →A smart contract holding reserves of two or more tokens that enables decentralised trading and yield for depositors.
Read more →A DeFi application that lets users supply assets to earn interest and borrow against collateral without a bank.
Read more →The automatic sale of a borrower's collateral when their loan-to-value ratio exceeds the protocol's safety threshold.
Read more →Borrowing capital to increase the size of a position beyond what owned funds allow, amplifying both gains and losses.
Read more →The base blockchain — the foundational network responsible for consensus, security, and final settlement.
Read more →A scaling solution built on top of a Layer 1 blockchain that processes transactions off-chain and posts proofs or data back to L1.
Read more →A mechanism that lets users stake tokens and receive a liquid, transferable receipt token in return.
Read more →The pool of unconfirmed transactions waiting to be included in a block.
Read more →Total market capitalisation — the current price of a token multiplied by its circulating supply.
Read more →Maximal Extractable Value — profit captured by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions within a block.
Read more →A fair-value price used by derivatives exchanges to calculate unrealised P&L and trigger liquidations, preventing manipulation by last-traded price.
Read more →A computer that participates in a blockchain network by storing and relaying data.
Read more →Non-Fungible Token — a unique on-chain asset whose ownership is tracked on a blockchain.
Read more →The per-share value of a fund calculated by dividing total assets minus liabilities by shares outstanding.
Read more →A service that supplies off-chain real-world data (e.g. asset prices) to smart contracts on-chain.
Read more →The total number (or value) of outstanding derivative contracts that have not been settled or closed.
Read more →A Layer 2 scaling solution that assumes transactions are valid by default and uses fraud proofs to challenge invalid state transitions within a challenge window.
Read more →Using publicly available blockchain transaction data to evaluate market conditions, holder behaviour, and asset flows.
Read more →A consensus mechanism requiring miners to solve computationally expensive puzzles to propose new blocks.
Read more →A consensus mechanism where validators lock up tokens as collateral to earn the right to propose and attest to blocks.
Read more →A secret cryptographic number that proves ownership of a blockchain address and authorises transactions.
Read more →The change in an asset's market price caused directly by a single trade.
Read more →A derivative contract tracking an asset's price with no expiry date, kept near spot price via a funding rate mechanism.
Read more →An exploit where a valid transaction on one chain is rebroadcast on a forked chain to duplicate the transfer.
Read more →An automatic adjustment to every holder's token balance, proportionally expanding or contracting supply without changing individual ownership percentages.
Read more →A traditional off-chain asset — property, bonds, equity, commodities — represented as a token on a blockchain.
Read more →A Layer 2 scaling technique that executes transactions off-chain and posts batched data or proofs to the Layer 1.
Read more →A scam where project founders abruptly withdraw liquidity or abandon a project, leaving investors with worthless tokens.
Read more →A human-readable backup of a wallet's master private key, typically 12 or 24 words.
Read more →The destruction of a portion of a validator's staked tokens as punishment for provably malicious behaviour.
Read more →Self-executing code deployed on a blockchain that automatically enforces agreement terms when conditions are met.
Read more →A token designed to maintain a stable value, usually pegged 1:1 to a fiat currency like the US dollar.
Read more →A legally separate entity created solely to hold specific assets, insulating them from the parent company's balance sheet and insolvency risk.
Read more →The difference between the expected price of a trade and the actual execution price, caused by insufficient liquidity.
Read more →A market where assets are bought and sold for immediate delivery at the current market price.
Read more →Locking up tokens to participate in network consensus or earn protocol rewards.
Read more →The centralised server in most Layer 2 rollups that orders transactions before they are batched and posted to Layer 1.
Read more →A signed instruction to transfer value or interact with a smart contract, broadcast to the blockchain network.
Read more →Total Value Locked — the aggregate value of crypto assets deposited in a DeFi protocol or the sector as a whole.
Read more →A digital asset issued on an existing blockchain, representing value, ownership, or utility within a specific ecosystem.
Read more →The process of representing ownership of real-world assets (property, bonds, funds) as tokens on a blockchain.
Read more →The economic design of a token — supply schedule, distribution, utility, and incentive structure.
Read more →The permanent removal of tokens from circulation by sending them to an unspendable address, reducing total supply.
Read more →A protocol-initiated replacement of an existing token with a new one, requiring holders to swap old tokens for new within a defined window.
Read more →The total value of an asset traded on exchanges over a given period, typically 24 hours.
Read more →A smart contract that pools deposited assets, deploys them into a yield strategy, and issues share tokens representing depositors' claims.
Read more →A schedule that releases tokens to team members, investors, or advisors gradually over time.
Read more →A node that participates in a Proof of Stake network's consensus process by staking tokens to propose and attest to blocks.
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