Crypto & Web3 Academy
Crypto & Web3 Glossary
Plain-language definitions of the coins, protocols, and concepts behind every W3D lesson, audit, and article. Terms are linked automatically throughout the site.
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A
- Account Abstraction Account abstraction turns wallets themselves into programmable smart contracts: spending limits, session keys for games, automatic recurring payments, gas
- Address An address is the public identifier of a wallet — a long string of letters and numbers (like `1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa`, the first Bitcoin…
- Address Poisoning Address poisoning is the scam of sending you tiny transactions from look-alike addresses — same first and last characters as your real…
- Airdrop Free tokens distributed to wallet holders — usually to reward early users or seed a new network with owners.
- Algorithmic Stablecoin An algorithmic stablecoin holds its peg with code instead of reserves — minting and burning supply (or a sister token) to push…
- All-Time High The all-time high (ATH) is the highest price an asset has ever printed. Breaking it triggers euphoria, headlines, and FOMO inflows; assets…
- Altcoin An altcoin is any cryptocurrency that isn't Bitcoin. The term covers Ethereum and all other layer-1 chains, tokens, and even joke coins…
- APY APY — annual percentage yield — is the yearly return on an investment assuming rewards are reinvested and compounded. A 20% APY…
- Automated Market Maker An automated market maker (AMM) is a DEX design with no order book: traders swap against a pool of tokens, and a…
B
- Base Chain Base is Coinbase's Ethereum L2, built on the OP Stack: cheap, EVM-equivalent transactions with Coinbase's distribution behind it — fiat on-ramps, 100M+…
- Base Fee The base fee is the mandatory, protocol-set portion of every Ethereum transaction fee (since EIP-1559): it rises when blocks are full and…
- Bear Market A bear market is a prolonged downturn — typically 70–90% drawdowns lasting a year or more — when leverage unwinds, tourists leave,…
- Bitcoin The first and largest cryptocurrency: a peer-to-peer digital money that no single company, bank, or government can censor.
- Bitcoin ETF A Bitcoin ETF is a regular stock-market fund that tracks Bitcoin's price — buy it in any brokerage account, no wallet or…
- BitVM BitVM is a design for Turing-complete contracts on Bitcoin *without* a fork: two parties lock funds, one asserts computation results, disputes resolve…
- Blobs Blobs are large binary data chunks rollups attach to Ethereum blocks since EIP-4844 — up to ~128 KB each, priced on their…
- Block A block is a batch of transactions bundled together and added to a blockchain. Every block carries a timestamp, the transactions included,…
- Block Explorer A block explorer is a website that reads the blockchain and shows whatever is on it: every transaction, address balance, block, fee,…
- Block Height Block height is a block's number in the chain — genesis is 0 (or 1), and every block increments by one. Halvings,…
- Block Reward The block reward is what the network pays whoever produces a block: newly minted coins plus that block's transaction fees. It's mining's…
- Block Time Block time is how often a chain produces blocks — ~10 minutes (Bitcoin), ~12 seconds (Ethereum), ~400 milliseconds (Solana). Faster blocks mean…
- Blockchain A shared, tamper-evident ledger of records stored on many computers at once — the base layer under all cryptocurrencies and Web3 apps.
- BNB Chain BNB Chain is Binance's EVM-compatible L1: fast, cheap, enormous ecosystem — and validator-capped (a few dozen elected validators, heavily exchange-adjacent
- Bonding Curve A bonding curve is a formula that sets a token's price from its supply — buying mints new tokens at ever-higher prices…
- BRC-20 BRC-20 is an experimental fungible-token standard on Bitcoin, built on Ordinals inscriptions: JSON blobs declaring deploy, mint, and transfer operations, t
- Bridge A bridge moves assets or messages between blockchains — you deposit tokens on chain A, and equivalent tokens are minted on chain…
- Bull Market A bull market is the euphoric phase — months of rising prices, record ATHs, mainstream attention, and everyone a genius. Liquidity floods…
- Bundler A bundler is the permissionless worker of ERC-4337 account abstraction: it collects user operations from the mempool, bundles them into one on-chain…
- Byzantine Generals Problem The Byzantine Generals Problem asks: how do separated generals coordinate an attack when messengers may lie and traitors may vote wrong? It's…
C
- CeFi Centralized finance: traditional crypto services — exchanges, lending, interest accounts — run by a company that holds your funds.
- Celestia Celestia is the first production modular data-availability layer: it orders transactions and guarantees their availability (via data-availability sampling)
- Chain Abstraction Chain abstraction is the UX endgame: users interact with *apps*, never chains — no switching networks, no bridging manually, no gas-token Tetris.…
- Circulating Supply Circulating supply is the number of tokens currently tradable on the open market — excluding locked team tokens, unvested allocations, and unreleased…
- Coinbase Transaction The coinbase transaction is each block's first entry: it creates new coins from nothing and pays them (plus fees) to the winning…
- Cold Wallet A cold wallet stores your private keys on a device that is offline — most commonly a dedicated hardware wallet, but paper…
- Collateral Collateral is crypto you lock up to back a loan or a minted asset. DeFi lending is over-collateralized by default: deposit $150…
- Composability Composability is smart contracts plugging into each other like Lego — lending protocols built on DEX prices, vaults built on lending, dashboards…
- Concentrated Liquidity Concentrated liquidity (Uniswap v3's breakthrough) lets liquidity providers aim their capital at a chosen price range instead of spreading it across all…
- Confirmation A confirmation is each additional block built on top of the one containing your transaction — more confirmations, exponentially harder reversal. Exchanges
- Consensus Consensus is the ruleset by which independent nodes agree on the one true history of the ledger. It's what decides who gets…
- Consensus Mechanism The rules a blockchain uses so thousands of independent computers agree on one true ledger.
- Crypto Exchange An online marketplace where you buy, sell, and trade cryptocurrencies — a centralized "bank-like" middleman for crypto.
- Crypto Wallet A tool that stores your private keys and lets you send, receive, and manage your crypto — it controls access to your…
- Crypto-Backed Stablecoin A crypto-backed stablecoin (DAI is the standard) holds its peg with on-chain collateral instead of bank dollars: lock $170 of ETH, mint…
- Cryptocurrency Digital money secured by cryptography and validated on a decentralized network instead of by a bank or government.
- Cryptoeconomics Cryptoeconomics is the discipline of designing protocols where rational self-interest produces secure outcomes — staking rewards for honesty, slashing for
- Cryptography Cryptography is the math that keeps blockchains safe: one-way fingerprints (hashes), a keypair where a public key derives an address and a…
- Custodial Wallet A custodial wallet is one where someone else holds the keys — an exchange account, a fintech app, an ETF. You log…
- Cypherpunk Cypherpunks are the privacy-activist movement (1990s mailing list onward) who argued liberty requires private digital communication — and built it: PGP, re
D
- DAO A DAO — decentralized autonomous organization — is a group coordinated by smart contracts and token votes instead of bosses and bylaws:…
- DApp A decentralized application — a front-end you can use, backed by smart contracts instead of a company database.
- Data Availability Data availability is the guarantee that a rollup's transaction data is actually published somewhere anyone can check — not just a claim…
- Data Availability Sampling Data-availability sampling (DAS) lets light clients verify giant blocks by checking tiny random pieces: if enough random samples are available, the whole…
- Decentralization The design property in which no single entity controls a network — power over rules, data, and funds is spread across many…
- Decentralized Exchange A decentralized exchange (DEX) is a trading platform run by smart contracts instead of a company. You connect your wallet and trade…
- Decentralized Ledger A decentralized ledger is a record of transactions that no single party owns. Instead of one bank or company keeping the official…
- DeFi Decentralized finance: financial services — lending, trading, saving — rebuilt as smart contracts with no bank in the middle.
- Delegated Proof of Stake Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) is a consensus variant where token holders vote for a small set of delegates — often 21–100…
- Delegation Delegation is when a token holder assigns their stake to a validator instead of running one. The validator proposes and confirms blocks;…
- Depeg A depeg is when a stablecoin breaks its $1.00 peg — trading at $0.97, $0.60, or $0.0001. Minor wobbles happen in volatility;…
- DePIN DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure networks) pays people in tokens to deploy real-world hardware: wireless hotspots (Helium), storage drives, GPU
- DeSci DeSci (decentralized science) funds and coordinates research outside universities and publishers: DAOs pool capital, fund labs, and tokenize IP (IP-NFTs) s
- DEX A decentralized exchange: a crypto marketplace running from user wallets via smart contracts — no deposit, no signup, no counterparty you must…
- DEX Aggregator A DEX aggregator (like 1inch or Jupiter) splits your trade across many DEXs and pools to find the best overall price —…
- Difficulty Adjustment The difficulty adjustment retargets Bitcoin's mining puzzle every 2,016 blocks (~two weeks) so blocks keep arriving every ~10 minutes no matter how…
- Dollar-Cost Averaging Dollar-cost averaging (DCA) means buying a fixed dollar amount on a fixed schedule — $50 every Friday — regardless of price. You…
- Double-Spend A double-spend is spending the same coins twice — the fundamental problem all consensus exists to prevent. The classic form: broadcast payment…
- Dusting Attack A dusting attack sends tiny amounts of crypto ("dust") to thousands of wallets, then watches where the dust moves — linking addresses…
E
- EigenLayer EigenLayer is the marketplace that invented restaking: Ethereum stakers opt in to secure additional protocols ("actively validated services") with the same
- EIP-1559 EIP-1559 (August 2021) rewrote Ethereum's fee market: instead of blind first-price auctions, each block has an algorithmic base fee that gets burned,…
- EIP-4844 EIP-4844 (March 2024) gave Ethereum a cheap lane for rollup data: instead of posting expensive calldata, rollups attach binary blobs that live…
- ERC-1155 ERC-1155 is the multi-token standard: one contract managing fungible, non-fungible, and semi-fungible items together — game swords (identical), tournament
- ERC-20 ERC-20 is the technical standard nearly all Ethereum tokens follow — a fixed menu of functions (`transfer`, `balanceOf`, `approve`...) that lets any…
- ERC-4337 ERC-4337 is the standard that brings smart accounts to Ethereum *without* a consensus change: user operations flow through a dedicated mempool, bundlers…
- ERC-721 ERC-721 is the standard for one-of-a-kind tokens on Ethereum: each token ID is unique with its own metadata and owner. CryptoPunks, Bored…
- Ethereum Ethereum is the second-largest blockchain and the first "world computer": a platform where anyone can deploy programs — smart contracts — that…
- Ethereum Name Service The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) maps human names like `vitalik.eth` to machine addresses — crypto's version of DNS. Register a name as…
- Exchange An exchange is a platform where you buy, sell, and trade crypto. There are two kinds: centralized (CEX) — a company that…
F
- Fair Launch A fair launch means no insiders got tokens first — no presale, no VC allocation, no team premine. Distribution happens through open…
- Faucet A faucet drips free testnet tokens so developers (and learners) can practice without spending real money — connect a wallet, solve a…
- Fiat-Backed Stablecoin A fiat-backed stablecoin (USDC, USDT) promises 1 token = $1 held in reserve — cash, T-bills, and equivalents at banks and custodians,…
- Finality Finality is the point after which a transaction can no longer be reversed. Bitcoin's is probabilistic (each confirmation makes reversal exponentially harde
- Flash Loan A flash loan lets anyone borrow millions with zero collateral — provided the loan is repaid *within the same transaction*. If repayment…
- Floor Price The floor price is the cheapest listed item in an NFT collection — the headline number quoted as "the collection is worth…
- FOMO FOMO — fear of missing out — is buying because the price is rising and everyone's getting rich except you. It's the…
- Fork A fork is a split in a blockchain's history or its rules. A software fork upgrades the code; a chain fork happens…
- Fraud Proof A fraud proof is how optimistic systems catch cheating: anyone watching can submit cryptographic evidence that a posted state transition was invalid,…
- Front-Running Front-running is jumping ahead of someone's pending transaction for profit — seeing your big buy in the mempool, buying first, then selling…
- FUD FUD — fear, uncertainty, doubt — is negative sentiment (earned or manufactured) that crashes prices: real hacks and bans, but also coordinated…
G
- Gas Gas is the fee a blockchain charges to execute a transaction or contract call. Each operation costs a measured amount of "gas";…
- Gas Fees Transaction costs paid to a blockchain's validators or miners — the price of bandwidth on the network.
- Gas Limit The gas limit is the maximum computation you'll pay for in one transaction — your spending cap. Set it too low and…
- Genesis Block The genesis block is a blockchain's very first block — block #0 (and #1 on Bitcoin, which famously embedded a headline in…
- Governance Governance is the process by which a blockchain or protocol changes its rules: who proposes, who votes, who has veto power, and…
- Governance Token A token that gives holders voting rights over a protocol's rules, fees, and treasury.
- Gwei Gwei is the everyday unit for Ethereum gas prices: 1 gwei = 0.000000001 ETH (a billionth). When wallets quote "25 gwei," that's…
H
- Halving The halving is Bitcoin's programmed supply cut: roughly every four years (every 210,000 blocks), the block reward miners earn is cut in…
- Hard Fork A permanent rule change to a blockchain that splits it into two chains — incompatible with the old software.
- Hardware Wallet A hardware wallet is a dedicated offline device (Ledger, Trezor, and peers) that generates and stores your private keys in a secure…
- Hash A fixed-size fingerprint produced from any input by a cryptographic function — the glue that chains blocks together.
- HODL HODL (born from a 2013 drunk-forum typo of "hold") means refusing to sell through crashes — the meme-ified strategy of long-term conviction…
- Honeypot A honeypot is a token contract that *looks* buyable but can't be sold — the contract's logic blocks sales, often silently, so…
- Hot Wallet A hot wallet is a wallet whose keys live on a device connected to the internet — a phone app, a browser…
- Howey Test The Howey Test is the US Supreme Court's four-part test for "is this an investment contract (a security)?": money invested, in a…
I
- ICO An ICO (Initial Coin Offering) sells new tokens to the public before launch to raise funds — crypto's 2017 craze, where whitepapers…
- IDO An IDO (Initial DEX Offering) launches a token directly on a decentralized exchange — liquidity pool created, trading open to anyone instantly,…
- Impermanent Loss Impermanent loss is what happens when you provide liquidity to a pool and the two tokens' prices diverge: when you withdraw, your…
- Intent-Based Intent-based design flips transactions upside down: instead of specifying *how* (exact contract calls, routes, slippage), you declare *what you want* ("swa
- Interoperability Interoperability is blockchains talking to each other — moving assets, data, and calls across networks via bridges, shared protocols (IBC on Cosmos),…
K
L
- L2Beat L2Beat (l2beat.com) is the independent risk dashboard for Ethereum scaling: every major rollup graded on stages (0/1/2 decentralization maturity), operator
- Layer 1 A blockchain's base protocol — the settlement layer that provides finality, security, and its native asset.
- Layer 2 Networks built on top of a blockchain to process transactions faster and cheaper, while inheriting the base layer security.
- Lightning Network The Lightning Network is Bitcoin's state-channel network for instant, near-free payments: open a channel once on-chain, then send unlimited sats off-chain,
- Limit Order A limit order buys or sells only at your price or better — "buy ETH at $3,000 or lower" — waiting in…
- Liquid Staking Liquid staking lets you stake tokens and receive a redeemable derivative in return — you keep earning staking rewards while the derivative…
- Liquidation Liquidation is the forced sale of your collateral when its value falls below what your loan requires. A liquidator repays part of…
- Liquidity How easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving its price — the lifeblood of any honest, usable market.
- Liquidity Mining Liquidity mining is when a protocol pays extra token rewards to people who deposit liquidity — bootstrapping its markets by printing ownership…
- LRT Token LRTs (liquid restaking tokens) are tradeable receipts for restaked positions: deposit stETH or ETH into EigenLayer via a protocol, receive an LRT,…
M
- Mainnet The mainnet is the live, production blockchain where real transactions happen and real tokens have value. Launching on mainnet is the moment…
- Market Cap Market cap is a token's total circulating supply × its current price. It's the usual "how big is this crypto" number, used…
- Market Maker A market maker quotes both buy and sell prices continuously, profiting from the spread while keeping markets liquid. In crypto they range…
- Max Supply Max supply is the hard cap on how many tokens will ever exist — 21 million for Bitcoin, none at all for…
- Mempool The mempool is the waiting room for unconfirmed transactions: the pool of pending transactions nodes have received but not yet put in…
- Merkle Tree A Merkle tree is a structure that folds thousands of hashes into a single root hash. Each transaction hashes, pairs of hashes…
- MEV MEV — Maximal Extractable Value — is the profit validators (and searchers) squeeze by reordering, including, or censoring transactions: front-running your
- MEV-Boost MEV-Boost is the middleware implementing proposer-builder separation on Ethereum: validators outsource block construction to specialized builders via relay
- Mining The Proof of Work process of racing to solve a puzzle, win the right to propose a block, and earn the block…
- Modular Blockchain A modular blockchain splits duties across specialized layers — one chain for execution, another for settlement, another for data availability — instead…
- Multisig Multisig — "multi-signature" — means a wallet or transaction requires more than one private key to authorize. A typical setup is 2-of-3:…
N
- Nakamoto Coefficient A single number measuring how many independent entities must be defeated to take control of a decentralized network.
- NFT An NFT — non-fungible token — is a token that is one-of-a-kind: each one has a unique identifier and metadata, so it…
- Node A computer running the blockchain's software — every node keeps its own copy of the ledger and re-verifies the rules.
- Non-Custodial Wallet A non-custodial wallet gives *you* — and only you — the keys: MetaMask, Phantom, hardware devices, and paper all qualify. No company…
O
- OP Stack The OP Stack is Optimism's open-source, modular toolkit for launching L2 chains: pick execution, settlement, and data layers like Lego, deploy your…
- Optimism Optimism is the original optimistic rollup (Ethereum L2) and steward of the OP Stack: cheap, EVM-equivalent transactions secured by Ethereum, governed by…
- Optimistic Rollup An optimistic rollup executes transactions off-chain and posts the results to Ethereum, *assuming* they're valid — "innocent until proven guilty." Anyone w
- Oracle A bridge that feeds real-world data — prices, weather, sports results — into smart contracts.
- Order Book An order book is the classic exchange engine: a live list of buy orders (bids) and sell orders (asks) at each price,…
- Ordinals Ordinals inscribe data directly onto individual satoshis — numbering them in mined order and attaching images, text, or code — creating Bitcoin-native…
P
- Paper Wallet A paper wallet is keys printed (or written) on paper and kept fully offline — an early form of cold storage. Generate…
- Paymaster A paymaster is an ERC-4337 contract that pays gas on a user's behalf — enabling gasless transactions, fees in any token, and…
- Permissionless Permissionless means anyone can participate with no approval — run a node, send a transaction, deploy a contract, build an app. No…
- Perpetual Futures Perpetual futures ("perps") are leveraged bets on a token's price with no expiry date — you post margin, pick long or short,…
- Phishing Phishing is the most common way crypto gets stolen without any blockchain hack: a fake website, email, or DM that looks like…
- Polygon zkEVM Polygon zkEVM is a zero-knowledge rollup aiming for full EVM equivalence: deploy Ethereum contracts unchanged, with validity proofs settling to Ethereum. T
- Priority Fee The priority fee ("tip") is the optional extra you pay validators to jump the queue — on top of the burned base…
- Private Key A long secret number that authorizes transactions from a wallet — anyone who has it can spend the funds it controls.
- Proof of History Proof of History (PoH) is Solana's clock-before-consensus trick: a verifiable delay function stamps every event with a cryptographic timestamp, so validato
- Proof of Reserves Proof of reserves is an exchange publishing cryptographic evidence it holds customer funds — typically a Merkle tree of balances plus wallet…
- Proof of Stake An energy-light consensus algorithm in which validators lock up coins as collateral and are chosen to propose blocks based on how much…
- Proof of Work The original consensus algorithm: miners spend computing power to solve puzzles, securing the network and making tampering expensive.
- Proposer-Builder Separation Proposer-builder separation (PBS) splits block production in two: specialized *builders* compete to assemble the most profitable block (extracting MEV), wh
- Proto-Danksharding Proto-danksharding is the nickname for EIP-4844: the first step toward full danksharding, introducing blobs and a separate data fee market without yet…
- Public Key A public key is the half of a keypair that's safe to share. Your wallet derives an address from it; the public…
Q
R
- Reentrancy Reentrancy is the bug that stole $60M in The DAO hack: a contract sends funds *before* updating its own balance, so a…
- Restaking Restaking reuses already-staked assets to secure *additional* protocols — your staked ETH simultaneously backs Ethereum and extra services (oracles, bridge
- Rollup A Layer 2 that executes transactions off-chain and rolls up thousands into a single proof posted to the main chain.
- RPC Endpoint An RPC endpoint is the server your wallet talks to for reading the blockchain and broadcasting transactions — almost always run by…
- Rug Pull A rug pull is a scam where developers launch a token, attract buyers, then drain the liquidity — pull the rug out…
- Runes Protocol Runes is Casey Rodarmor's UTXO-native fungible-token protocol for Bitcoin — the cleaner successor to BRC-20: balances live in UTXOs instead of inscription
S
- Sandwich Attack A sandwich attack wraps your trade in two attacker trades — buy just before you, sell just after — profiting from the…
- Satoshi A satoshi ("sat") is the smallest unit of Bitcoin: 0.00000001 BTC, or one hundred-millionth of a coin. Named after Satoshi Nakamoto, sats…
- Seed Phrase A 12–24 word backup that regenerates your entire wallet — the master key every private key in your wallet is derived from.
- SegWit SegWit (Segregated Witness, 2017) moved transaction signatures out of Bitcoin's block size limit — effectively raising capacity without a hard fork —…
- Self-Custody Holding your own private keys rather than letting a bank or exchange hold them for you.
- Sequencer The sequencer is the operator that orders transactions on a rollup — collecting user transactions, executing them, and posting batches to Ethereum.…
- Session Keys Session keys are limited-permission keys for blockchain apps: instead of approving every move (or handing over god-mode access), your smart wallet issues…
- Sharding Sharding splits a blockchain's workload across parallel sub-chains ("shards"), each processing its own transactions, so total throughput multiplies. Near's
- Shared Sequencing Shared sequencing lets multiple rollups use one decentralized sequencer network instead of each running its own centralized one — Espresso and Astria…
- Sidechain A sidechain is an independent blockchain connected to a main chain by a two-way bridge: lock coins on one side, mint equivalents…
- SIM Swap A SIM swap is when an attacker convinces your phone carrier to move your number to their SIM — intercepting every SMS…
- Slippage Slippage is the difference between the price you expect and the price you actually get on a trade. It happens when your…
- Smart Contract Self-executing code stored on a blockchain that runs exactly as written — the building block of DeFi, DApps, and tokens.
- Smart Contract Audit A smart-contract audit is a professional security review of a protocol's code before (and after) launch — auditors hunt for reentrancy, oracle,…
- Snapshot Voting Snapshot voting is off-chain governance polling: token balances are recorded ("snapshotted") at a block, holders sign gas-free votes, and results are talli
- Social Recovery Social recovery replaces the lone seed phrase with a circle of trusted people or devices: lose access, and a threshold of your…
- SocialFi SocialFi tokenizes social graphs: creator coins, token-gated communities, collectible posts, tradeable attention. Friend.tech's key-trading mania was the b
- Solo Staking Solo staking means running your own validator with your own stake — your machine, your keys, your responsibility — instead of delegating…
- Stablecoin A cryptocurrency pegged to a stable value (usually the US dollar) — DeFi's bridge between volatile crypto and steady purchasing power.
- Staking Locking up crypto to secure a Proof of Stake network — earning rewards in exchange for helping validate blocks.
- Staking Pool A staking pool combines many holders' tokens to run validators collectively — splitting costs, minimums, and rewards proportionally. Exchange pools, liquid
- State Channel A state channel lets two parties transact privately off-chain as many times as they want, settling only the final result on the…
- Superchain The Superchain is Optimism's vision of many OP Stack chains acting as one: shared bridging, shared sequencing, shared governance — Base, OP…
- Sybil Attack A Sybil attack is when one entity creates many fake identities to gain disproportionate influence — thousands of "independent" nodes that are…
- Synthetic Asset A synthetic asset tracks another asset's price without holding it — on-chain tokens mirroring stocks, commodities, or currencies via collateral plus oracle
T
- Taproot Taproot (activated November 2021) is Bitcoin's biggest upgrade in years: smarter signatures (Schnorr) that make complex spending conditions look like ordin
- Tendermint Tendermint (now CometBFT) is the consensus engine behind Cosmos and many app-chains: validators take turns proposing blocks and vote in two rounds,…
- Testnet A testnet is a parallel blockchain that works almost exactly like the real one — but the coins are worthless test tokens…
- The Merge The Merge (September 2022) was Ethereum's switch from proof-of-work mining to proof-of-stake validation — the entire $200B+ network changing its security e
- Token A token is a digital asset issued on an existing blockchain — often Ethereum or Solana — as a smart contract. Unlike…
- Token Unlock A token unlock is a scheduled release of previously locked tokens into circulation — team vesting cliffs, investor tranches, ecosystem funds. Unlock…
- Tokenomics Tokenomics is a token's economic design: total supply, how it's distributed (team, investors, treasury, community), emission/release schedules, lockups, bu
- Toncoin Toncoin powers TON, the Telegram-originated L1: sharded, PoS, built for hundreds of millions of in-app users via wallet bots and mini-apps inside…
- Total Value Locked Total Value Locked (TVL) is the dollar value of all assets deposited in a DeFi protocol — its pools, vaults, and lending…
- Transaction A transaction is an instruction signed by your private key and sent to the network — "send 0.1 ETH to this address,"…
- Treasury A treasury is a project's pool of funds — usually its own tokens plus accumulated revenue — used to pay contributors, run…
- Trustless Trustless doesn't mean untrustworthy — it means you don't *need* to trust any person or company, because verification is built in. You…
U
V
- Validator A validator is a node that actively secures a proof-of-stake network: it proposes and confirms blocks, earns rewards, and loses ("gets slashed")…
- Validity Proof A validity proof (usually a ZK proof) demonstrates a computation was correct *before* anyone needs to trust it — no challenge window,…
- Validium A validium processes transactions off-chain with ZK validity proofs but keeps the data off Ethereum — with a committee or operator instead.…
- Vesting Vesting is a lockup schedule that releases tokens gradually — team and investor allocations typically vest over 1–4 years instead of dumping…
- veToken A veToken (vote-escrowed token, pioneered by Curve's veCRV) is what you get for locking a governance token for months or years: more…
- Volatility Volatility is how much an asset's price jumps. Crypto is chronically volatile — double-digit percentage moves in a day are normal. High…
W
- Web3 The vision of an internet owned by users rather than platforms — built on blockchains, wallets, and open protocols.
- Whitepaper A whitepaper is the founding technical document of a crypto project — Satoshi's 9-page Bitcoin paper is the archetype: problem, design, math,…
- Wrapped Token A wrapped token is a 1:1 IOU that lets a coin work on a chain it wasn't built for — WBTC is…
Y
- Yield Farming Yield farming is the practice of moving your tokens between DeFi protocols to maximize returns — providing liquidity, lending, staking — often…
- Yield Vault A yield vault (Yearn pioneered them) is a smart contract that automates yield farming for you: deposit tokens, and the vault moves…
Z
- Zero-Knowledge Proof A zero-knowledge (ZK) proof is a cryptographic way to prove a statement is true *without* revealing the facts: prove you know the…
- ZK Rollup A ZK rollup executes transactions off-chain and posts a zero-knowledge proof to Ethereum proving the new state is correct. No challenge window,…
- zkVM A zkVM is a virtual machine that proves its own execution: run any program, get a validity proof that it ran correctly…