51 terms, plainly defined.

A free distribution of tokens to a set of wallet addresses, usually to bootstrap a network or reward users.

Any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin.

An Automated Market Maker — a protocol that prices and trades assets from a pool of liquidity rather than an order book.

An Application Programming Interface — the contract a service exposes for other software to call.

All-Time High — the highest price an asset has ever traded at.

All-Time Low — the lowest price an asset has ever traded at.

A bearer dollar for the internet age — the first and largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation.

A shared, append-only ledger of transactions, replicated across many independent computers.

A protocol that moves value between two otherwise-isolated blockchains.

Centralised Finance — financial services delivered by a custodial intermediary, in contrast to DeFi.

A wallet whose private keys are stored offline, dramatically reducing exposure to remote attacks.

The mechanism by which a network agrees on the order of transactions — PoW, PoS, etc.

The mathematical practice of secure communication and proof, the substrate every blockchain rests on.

A Decentralized Autonomous Organization — a group whose rules and treasury are enforced on-chain.

Dollar-Cost Averaging — buying a fixed dollar amount of an asset on a recurring schedule.

Decentralized Finance — financial protocols that run on smart contracts without an intermediary.

A Decentralized Exchange — a venue where assets are swapped peer-to-peer via smart contracts.

An Exchange-Traded Fund — a security that tracks an asset or basket and trades on a regulated exchange.

A general-purpose blockchain that introduced programmable smart contracts.

Fully Diluted Valuation — market price multiplied by total supply, including unlocked but un-circulating tokens.

A divergence in the blockchain — a network upgrade or a new chain that copies state from an existing one.

The fee paid to a blockchain to include and execute a transaction.

A pre-programmed reduction in Bitcoin's block reward, occurring roughly every four years.

A wallet whose keys are kept online and connected to the internet for quick access.

Know Your Customer — identity-verification requirements imposed by regulated financial services.

A base blockchain (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana) that settles its own transactions natively.

A protocol built on top of a Layer 1 to scale throughput or reduce fees (e.g. Lightning, Arbitrum).

A pool of assets in an AMM, deposited by liquidity providers and traded against by users.

Price multiplied by circulating supply — a measure of an asset's aggregate value.

The waiting room for unconfirmed transactions before a block producer includes them.

A Non-Fungible Token — a unique on-chain asset, often used for digital art or membership.

A number used once — in PoW mining, the value miners search for to satisfy the difficulty target.

A service that pipes off-chain data (prices, events) onto a blockchain.

A consensus mechanism in which block production is delegated by stake held in the protocol's native asset.

A consensus mechanism in which block production is awarded for finding rare hash outputs (i.e. mining).

The secret value that proves ownership and authorises spend from a wallet — never share it.

Derived from a private key — used by others to verify your signatures and to derive your address.

A scaling design that batches Layer 2 transactions and posts a compact proof or summary to Layer 1.

Real World Asset — a tokenised representation of off-chain value (Treasuries, real estate, etc.).

12 or 24 ordinary words that deterministically derive every key in a wallet. Treat like cash.

Holding your own private keys, rather than entrusting them to a custodian like an exchange.

Slang for a low-quality, often speculative cryptocurrency with little fundamental value.

The difference between the price you expect on a trade and the price you actually receive.

A program that runs on a blockchain and enforces its own rules without a counterparty.

A trade settled immediately at the prevailing market price, as opposed to a derivative.

A token designed to maintain a stable peg, usually to the US dollar. USDC is the canonical example.

Locking tokens to help secure a Proof-of-Stake network in exchange for a share of fees and rewards.

The economic design of a token — supply, issuance, distribution, sinks, incentives.

Total Value Locked — the dollar value of assets deposited in a DeFi protocol.

A regulated US-dollar stablecoin issued by Circle, redeemable 1:1 for USD.

Software (or hardware) that holds the private keys controlling on-chain assets.