Crypto & Finance Glossary

Not Financial Advice.

A unique digital asset on a blockchain representing ownership of art, collectibles, or other items.

Not Gonna Make It.

Someone who owns zero cryptocurrency, usually because they're skeptical or hostile toward the entire space.

Someone who owns zero cryptocurrency and is vocal about their skepticism.

A computer running blockchain software that stores and validates transactions.

A number used once in cryptographic operations.

Someone who isn't involved in crypto or doesn't understand the culture.

The total value of a leveraged position, not just the margin you put up.

Transactions or data stored outside the main blockchain.

A technical indicator that uses volume flow to predict price movements.

Transactions and data recorded directly on the blockchain.

The practice of analyzing blockchain data to understand market behavior, track whale movements, and identify trends.

Running machine learning model inference on or verified by a blockchain.

A system for evaluating an address's trustworthiness based on its blockchain activity history.

Operation code.

The total number of outstanding derivative contracts (like futures or options) that haven't been settled.

In the context of restaking and EigenLayer, an operator is an entity that runs infrastructure to validate AVSs (Actively Validated Services).

An Ethereum Layer 2 network that uses optimistic rollup technology to process transactions faster and cheaper while inheriting Ethereum's security.

A Layer 2 scaling solution that assumes all transactions are valid and only runs computation if someone challenges a transaction.

Contracts giving the right, but not obligation, to buy (call) or sell (put) an asset at a set price before expiration.

A service that brings external data onto the blockchain.

An attack where a hacker manipulates the price data that oracles feed to smart contracts.

A decentralized system of nodes that delivers real-world data to smart contracts.

A user-friendly DEX on Solana known for its clean interface and concentrated liquidity pools called Whirlpools.

A list of all buy and sell orders for an asset, organized by price.

A visualization of all open buy and sell orders for an asset at different price levels.

The stream of buy and sell orders coming into a market, revealing who's trading and in what direction.

A trading approach focused on analyzing the actual buy and sell orders hitting the market rather than just looking at price charts.

Trading done directly between parties rather than on an exchange.

Requiring borrowers to deposit more collateral than the amount they're borrowing.

A valuation metric comparing a company's stock price to its earnings per share.

The largest DEX on BNB Chain, also running on Ethereum and other chains.

Someone who sells at the first sign of price decline.

Practicing trading strategies with fake money to learn without risking real capital.

Processing multiple transactions simultaneously instead of one at a time.

A crypto wallet that uses device biometrics (Face ID, fingerprint) or hardware security keys for authentication instead of seed phrases.

A smart contract in the ERC-4337 account abstraction system that sponsors gas fees on behalf of users.

Proposer-Builder Separation.

Trading or transacting directly with another person without an intermediary.

A fixed exchange rate between two assets.

A DeFi protocol that lets you trade future yield.

A system that anyone can use or participate in without needing approval from a central authority.

A derivative contract similar to futures but with no expiration date.

A social engineering attack where scammers create fake websites, emails, or messages that look legitimate to steal your credentials or trick you into signing malicious transactions.

An early Ethereum scaling solution that creates child chains anchored to the main chain.

A trend where protocols reward users with points instead of tokens, with the implied promise that points will convert to tokens in a future airdrop.

A mechanism where protocols award non-transferable points to users for specific actions like providing liquidity, trading, or bridging.

A multi-chain network that connects different blockchains (called parachains) through a central relay chain.

A decentralized prediction market where you can bet real money on the outcome of real-world events like elections, sports, and crypto prices.