| title | date | weight | chapter |
|---|---|---|---|
Glossary |
2020-12-28 00:43:26 -0500 |
100 |
true |
A glossary for common terms in Ethereum and cryptocurrencies.
👷 This is a great place to get started in open source.
⏲️ Just five mins can make a huge impact at scale.
To add terms, make a pull request for review.
See our CONTRIBUTING.md.
Helpful emojis to let you know status of each section.
| Legend | Description |
|---|---|
| UNDER DEVELOPMENT | |
| 👷 | IN PROGRESS |
| 🏗️ | NEEDS HELP |
| ✅ | DONE |
0-9
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Special Symbols
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 👷 | 51% Attack | When a miner or group of miners control greater than 50% of the network's mining hash rate. |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 👷 | Absolute Advantage | An economics concept in which one party has a direct efficency advantage in producing/providing a specific good/service over another party. |
| 👷 | Active Management | An investing strategy employed by fund managers aiming to outperform an market index in order to generate profits. |
| 👷 | Ad Hoc | A Latin phrase used in English to mean something created when necessary, in the moment, or improvised for a specific purpose. Similar to impromptu. |
| 👷 | Address | A string of hexidecimals that designates the location on a blockchain network. Usually meant to be only used once. |
| 👷 | Airdrop | A form of distributing digital assets to the public. Usually distributed to current token holders, addresses that have interacted with a specific protocol or by being an active address on a blockchain. |
| 👷 | AirSwap | TBD |
| 👷 | Algorithm | A sequence of unambigious instructions, or set of rules, used for the purpose of solving a problem. |
| 👷 | All or None Order (AON) | An order which one place, must either be filled completly or not at all. This prevents any partial filing of orders. |
| All-Time High (ATH) | The highest price a of a cryptocurrency or asset in a qoute currency, such as US Dollar, BTC, or ETH. | |
| Allocation | The portion of tokens or equity, that may be earned, purchased, or set aside for certain entities or activites. These entities can be investors, teams, organizations, or communities. | |
| Alpha (software) | The first look at a product in a very basic form released by a team. Often used in software industry. | |
| Alpha (finance) | The difference between a market's index (or a representative benchmark) and an investment's return. Used to assess the performance of an investment in an active strategy. | |
| Altcoin | Used to describe a cryptocurrency that is not Bitcoin. | |
| Anti Money Laundering (AML) | The legal and regulatory procedures designed to prevent criminals from disguising illegally generated funds as legitimate income. | |
| Application Programming Interface (API) | An abstracted interface that allows users to interact with an application or service programmatically. | |
| Application-Specific Integrated Circut (ASIC) | A customized integrated circuit (aka chip) designed for maximum performance in a specific area instead of general computation. Usually used to create customized mining equipment for Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency networks to maximize rewards through increased hash power. | |
| Arbitrage | Buying and selling an asset in different markets to profit from the price difference. Buy low in one market, sell at a higher price in another. | |
| ASIC-resistant | A cryptocurrency whose procotol mining algorithm is configured to remove any advantage from using ASIC machines when compared to GPU mining. Usually works by inflating the information in RAM taking advantage of the narrow link between memory and CPU. An example can be seen with Monero or Ethereum. | |
| Ask Price | The price a seller is willing to accept on their sell order when trading an asset. Also known as the offer price. | |
| Asset Management | A system that helps individual or companies manage assets, either for their client or for themselves. | |
| Asynchronous | Events in a system that do not happen in linear (synchronous) order, or events that can occur independently of the main process flow. | |
| Atomic Swap | An smart contract that allows tokens to be traded peer-to-peer without the need for a trusted third party, usually via escrow contracts and Hash timelock contracts (HCTL). They are atomic because they either are completed or not. | |
| Attack surface | Areas in a software environment where an attacker can exploit its system. Successful attacks vectors are called exploits. | |
| Auction | A public sale where goods, assets or services are sold to the highest bidder through a bidding process. | |
| 👷 | Automated Market Maker (AMM) | Automated market makers are smart contracts that create a liquidity pool of ERC20 tokens, which are automatically traded by an algorithm rather than an order book. This effectively replaces a traditional limit order-book with a system where assets can be automatically swapped against the pool’s latest price. |
| There are two main types of automated market makers. One may be governed and set up by professional market makers, and the other is fully automated by an algorithm, allowing any user in the market to participate by depositing liquidity into the smart contract. |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Bag | A portfolio of assets, usually cryptocurrency tokens. | |
| Bear Market | A negative trend in a market's price. | |
| Benchmark | A measurement standard used to gauge the perfomance of an investment or portfolio. | |
| Beta coefficient (finance) | A measure of a stock's volatility in relation to the overall market. Simply, its a measure of how an asset moves on average when the overall stock market increase or decreases. | |
| 👷 | Beta (software) | software refers to computer software that is undergoing testing that hasn't been officially released. It's software in development between the alpha phase and the release phase. It's generally considered "complete" by the developer that is not ready for general use due to a lack of testing. |
| 👷 | Bid price | The price that a prospective buyer is prepared to pay for a securities or other asset. A bid price is generally arrived at through a process of negotiation between the seller and buyer. Prices are designed to a desirable outcome from the entity making the bid. When multiple buyers bid, it can develop into a bidding war; eventually, the price becomes settled when a buyer makes an offer which a rival is unwilling to top. In the context of stock trading, the bid price refers to the highest amount of money a prospective buyer is willing to spend on it. |
| Bid-ask spread | TBD | |
| Bitcoin | An immutable and trustless ledger made up of a decentralized network of nodes to manage and issue a global digital currency that mimics gold's property of scarcity via a hard limit of 21 million coins. Explicitly it is used as a store of value by mimicking the properties of money. It is the first successful attempt at issuing decentralized currency, non-fiat, non-state actor currency which solves the double-spend problem. | |
| 👷 | Bitcoin core | Bitcoin Core consists of both “full-node” software for fully validating the blockchain as well as a bitcoin wallet. Bitcoin Core is programmed to decide which blockchain contains a valid transaction. Users of Bitcoin Core only accept transactions for that blockchain, making it the Bitcoin blockchain that everyone else to use. The open-source project maintains and releases Bitcoin client software called “Bitcoin Core”; which is the descendant of the original Bitcoin software client by Satoshi Nakamoto after publishing the Bitcoin whitepaper. |
| Bitcoin dominance | TBD | |
| Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPS) | TBD | |
| Blockchain | TBD | |
| Block explorer | TBD | |
| Block Header | TBD | |
| Block Height | Number of blocks that have been currently mined since genesis | |
| Block Reward | Amount of token reward miners get per block successfully mined | |
| Black swan | TBD | |
| Bond | TBD | |
| Bot | TBD | |
| Bounty | TBD | |
| Brute Force Attack | TBD | |
| BTD/BTFD (Buy the Fu@*ing Dip) | Captitalizing on the price drop of an asset because its fundamentals merits future apperciation in value. | |
| 👷 | Bull Market | A bull market is a term that describes the condition of a financial market in which prices are rising or expected to rise. This term usually refers to the stock market, but can be applied to anything traded. Included are bonds, real estate, commodities, and cryptocurrencies. |
| Since prices continuously rise and fall during trading, the classification of "bull market" is reserved for extended amounts of time where a large portion of prices are rising. | ||
| 👷 | Bull Trap | A bull trap is a signal that proves to be false by indicating that a decreasing trend in a stock or index has reversed and is starting upward. However, the trend continues going down. Traders acting on this buy signal can be trapped and generate losses on long positions. |
| BUIDL | TBD | |
| Bull Market | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Candlestick Chart (Technical Analysis) | TBD | |
| Candidate Block | TBD | |
| Capitulation | TBD | |
| Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) | TBD | |
| Censorship-resistance | TBD | |
| Centralization | TBD | |
| Central Bank | TBD | |
| Central Processing Unit | TBD | |
| Centralized | TBD | |
| Cipher | TBD | |
| Circulating Supply | TBD | |
| Cloud | TBD | |
| Coin | TBD | |
| Coinbase (Bitcoin) | The transaction that rewards a miner with the block reward and any transaction fees for their work on the Bitcoin network. | |
| Colocation | TBD | |
| Collateral | TBD | |
| Commodity Futures Trading Commission | TBD | |
| Commit | TBD | |
| Confluence | TBD | |
| Confirmation | TBD | |
| Consumer Price Index (CPI) | TBD | |
| Consensus | TBD | |
| Contract Address | TBD | |
| Commodity Futures Trading Commission | TBD | |
| Credentials | TBD | |
| Cold Wallet | Wallet kept completely offline. Similar concept to 'air-gapping' sensitive computers | |
| Correction | TBD | |
| Cryptocurrency | TBD | |
| Cryptography | TBD | |
| Crypto Twitter | TBD | |
| Cypherpunks | An online internet movement started in the late 1980s, which advocated the widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies to aid in social and political change. Achievement of its members includes the creation of SSL, BitTorrent, Bitcoin, smart contracts and more. Also a sub-genre within science fiction. | |
| Custody | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Daemon | TBD | |
| DAI | TBD | |
| 👷 | Dead Cat Bounce | A short-lived recovery in the price of a declining stock. |
| Decentralized Application (DApp) | TBD | |
| 👷 | Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) | DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization, a system of hard-coded rules that define actions a decentralized organization will take. DAO's are open source code operated entirely by its community. The underlying structure and working mechanisms of a DAO aren't based on any kind of hierarchical management. No single entity is in charge, nor any directory board and, no centralization of power. DAOs are conducted by smart contracts that are governed by the collective work of its contributors and community members by enabling the creation of a more efficient system reducing the need for human input, overall costs, and risk related to human behavior. Allowing for activities to be executed in a completely decentralized, automated manner is what makes a DAO useful and interesting concept. |
| Decentralized Exchange (DEX) | TBD | |
| Decentralized Finance (DeFi) | TBD | |
| Decryption | TBD | |
| Deep Web | TBD | |
| Design Flaw Attack | TBD | |
| Design Thinking | TBD | |
| Difficulty | TBD | |
| Difficulty Bomb | TBD | |
| Diversification | TBD | |
| Dollar Cost Averaging | TBD | |
| 👷 | Double Spending | One of the primary concerns of any cryptocurrency developer is the issue of double-spending.This refers to the incidence of an individual spending a balance of that cryptocurrency more than once, effectively creating a disparity between the spending record and the amount of that cryptocurrency available, as well as the way that it is distributed.The issue of double-spending is a problem that cash does not have; A technical issue that arises with the notion of a digital currency is the ability for somebody to duplicate the digital money and spend it simultaneously at two or more places.This 'double-spend' problem is prevented in blockchain-based cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin by using a consensus mechanism known as proof-of-work (PoW). |
| Distributed ledger technology | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Efficient Market Hypothesis | TBD | |
| Elliptic Curve Cryptography | TBD | |
| Ethereum | TBD | |
| Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA) | TBD | |
| Ethereum Foundation | TBD | |
| ERC-20 | TBD | |
| ERC-721 | TBD | |
| ERC-1569 | TBD | |
| Exchange | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Fakeout | ||
| Falling Knife | ||
| Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) | ||
| Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) | ||
| FUDDING | Creating fear, uncertainty and doubt | |
| Fiat | ||
| Filecoin | ||
| Finality | ||
| First Mover Advantage | ||
| Fiscal Policy | ||
| Flippening | ||
| Forced Liquidation | ||
| Forex (FX) | ||
| Forced liquidation | ||
| Formal Verification | ||
| Full Node | ||
| Fundamental Analysis | ||
| Fungibility | ||
| Futures Contract |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Gas | TBD | |
| Gas Limit | TBD | |
| General Public License (GPL) | TBD | |
| Genesis Block | TBD | |
| Git | TBD | |
| GitHub | TBD | |
| Gossip Protocol | TBD | |
| Gwei | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Hacker | TBD | |
| Haha Money Printer Go BRRRRRR | A meme circulating in 2020 is making fun of the United States Federal Reserves policy of quantitative easing, aka printing money out of thin air. | |
| Halving | ||
| Hard Cap | ||
| 👷 | Hash | The output produced by a hash function. Also known as a digest, hash value, or hash code |
| 👷 | Hash function | Any function used to map data of an arbitrary size to fixed-size value. Usually, it is deterministic, one way and returns a hexidecimal number output. |
| 👷 | Hash Rate | The speed at which a computer or mining hardware calculates new hashes. Measured in hashes per second. |
| Hashed TimeLock Contract | ||
| HODL | Hold on for dear life. Originally a typo of 'HOLD' originating from bitcointalk forum urge users to retain bitcoin ownership and not sell. | |
| Honeypot |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Iceberg Order | A single large order that has been split into smaller limit orders to conceal the actual order quantity. Usually done through the use of an automated program. | |
| Immutability | ||
| Index | ||
| Initial Coin Offering (ICO) | ||
| Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) | ||
| Initial Public Offering (IPO) | ||
| Integrated Circuit | ||
| Interoperability | ||
| 👷 | InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) | A peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol developed as a decentralized alternative to HTTP. It allows for storage and access to data (from single files to whole websites) on a peer-to-peer network, reducing the potential for central point of failure and censorship. |
| 👷 | InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) Gateway | A program that provides a workaround to deliver content stored on IPFS to applications that do not yet support IPFS natively. |
| IOU | ||
| Isolated Margin | ||
| Issuance |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| J-Curve | TBD | |
| J-Curve Effect | TBD | |
| Joint Stock Company | TBD | |
| Junk Bond | TBD | |
| Just In Time (JIT) | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 👷 | Keccak | is a versatile cryptographic function known as a hash function, it's also used for authentication, (authenticated) encryption and pseudo-random number generation. Its structure is the extremely simple sponge construction and internally it uses the innovative Keccak-f cryptographic permutation. |
| Know Your Customer (KYC) | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Latency | TBD | |
| Law of Demand | TBD | |
| Law of Supply | TBD | |
| Layer 2 | TBD | |
| Ledger | TBD | |
| Library | TBD | |
| Lightning Network | TBD | |
| Linux | TBD | |
| Liquidity | TBD | |
| Listing | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| TBD | ||
| Mainnet | TBD | |
| Mainnet Swap | TBD | |
| Maker | TBD | |
| Malware | TBD | |
| Margin Trading | TBD | |
| Market Capitalization | TBD | |
| Market Momentum | TBD | |
| Market Order | TBD | |
| Masternode | TBD | |
| Maximum Supply | TBD | |
| Mempool | TBD | |
| Merged Mining | TBD | |
| Merkle Tree | TBD | |
| Metadata | TBD | |
| Mining | TBD | |
| Mining Farm | TBD | |
| 👷 | Modern Porfolio Theory | A theory for how to construct a portfolio with investments to maximize returns and maintain a level of acceptable market risk. It assumes that a portfolio can have lower risk based on the diversification and lower correlation of the portfolio’s investments. |
| Monetary Policy | TBD | |
| Moon | TBD | |
| Multisignature | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Node | TBD | |
| Non-fungible Token (NFT) | TBD | |
| 👷 | Nonce | A nonce is an abbreviation for "number only used once," which is a number added to a hashed—or encrypted—block in a blockchain that, when rehashed, meets the difficulty level restrictions. The nonce is the number that blockchain miners are trying to find. The first miner to do so receives the cryptocurrency reward. |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Off-chain | TBD | |
| Offshore Account | TBD | |
| One cancels the Other Order | TBD | |
| Open-Source Software (OSS) | TBD | |
| Oracle | TBD | |
| Order Book | TBD | |
| Orphan Block | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Paper Wallet | TBD | |
| Passive Management | TBD | |
| Peer-to-Peer (P2P) | TBD | |
| Pegged Currency | TBD | |
| Phishing | TBD | |
| Plasma | TBD | |
| Ponzi Scheme | TBD | |
| Price Action | TBD | |
| Prisoner's Dilemma | TBD | |
| Private Key | TBD | |
| Private Sale | TBD | |
| Progressive Web Application (PWA) | TBD | |
| Pseudorandom | TBD | |
| Public Key | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Quadratic Voting | TBD | |
| Quantum Computing | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Race attack | TBD | |
| Ransomware | TBD | |
| Rekt | TBD | |
| Resistance | TBD | |
| Return on Investment (ROI) | TBD | |
| RoadMap | TBD | |
| Routing Attack | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| SAI | TBD | |
| Satoshi | TBD | |
| Satoshi Nakamoto | TBD | |
| Scribble | Scribble transforms existing contracts into contracts with equivalent behaviour, except that they also check properties. With these instrumented contracts, you can use testing, fuzzing or symbolic execution to check if your properties can be violated. | |
| Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) | TBD | |
| Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) | TBD | |
| Security Audit | TBD | |
| Seed Phrase | TBD | |
| 👷 | Seed round | Considered the earliest offical round of financing for a startup, in which the main sources of capital are typcially angel investors or institutions specialized in seed funding - corporate or venture capitial seed funds, accelerators, institutional crowdfunding platforms. Financing amount can typically range from $100 thousand to $5 million. Startups in seed round generally have validated a proof of concept or MVP to have a fit in the market, and have idenified the requirements (e.g., skillset, technology, partnerships) to build out the product. |
| Segregated Witness (SegWit) | TBD | |
| 👷 | Selfish Mining | a miner or group of miners increases their revenue by strategically withholding and releasing blocks to the network. Typically, a miner will announce a block as soon as they find it. If the block is confirmed, they get a reward for the block. |
| The goal of shelfish mining is to remain at least one block ahead of the network. Nodes accept the chain with the most accumulated proof of work as a valid blockchain. Anytime, the selfish miner can reveal their chain is longer than the one followed by the rest of the network, the existing blocks are discarded and the transaction becomes reversed. The miner then collects the reward and cause other parties to waste their resources. | ||
| Sell Wall | TBD | |
| Sentiment | TBD | |
| 👷 | Series A | Financing round that occurs after a seed round and is often the first round in which venture capital investors are involved. This round can include multiple investors, in which one typically leads the process and receives a higher amount of equity/ownership level in return. Financing amount can have a large range from $10 million to even a few billion depending on the startup's offerings and industry. Startups at Series A generally have a completed product, established userbase, and revenue generation, and seek funding to support further product and/or business model development, cover costs of production or market expansion prior to becoming revenue financed. |
| 👷 | Series B | Financing round that occurs after the Series A round and involves similar type of investors and similar process. Startups at Series B have validated the product-market fit, established business operations, and have a growing customer base. Startups in this financing round generally seek financing to scale up business operations, hire additional staff, and tackle growing competition. |
| 👷 | Series C | Financing round that occurs after a Series B, involves venture capital firms, and is typically the last round of private equity financing, though additional rounds may occur prior to an IPO. The process takes the same form as Series B - one venture capital fund leading the process that can involve multiple other venture capital funds. Startups in this financing round are generally successful in with their current offerings and current market, and seek funding to develop new offerings, expand into new markets, or acquire new businesses. |
| 👷 | Sharpe Ratio | A metric to understand the performance (rate of return) associated to risk of a portfolio or asset. It assumes that there is a risk free rate of return available, such as the yield for a US Treasury bond. It also assumes that volatility of rate of return (represented as a standard deviation) is equal to risk. It is calculated by subtracting the risk free rate of return from the total rate of return and dividing by the standard deviation of the expected rate of return. A lower Sharpe ratio indicates performance due to higher risk and a higher Sharpe ratio indicates performance due to lower risk. When comparing portfolios and assets, those with a higher Sharpe ratio are considered favorable as their returns come from good investment rather than high risk. |
| Smart Contract | TBD | |
| Snapshot | TBD | |
| Snapshot (Tool) | TBD | |
| Source Code | TBD | |
| Stablecoin | TBD | |
| Staking | TBD | |
| Staking Pool | TBD | |
| State Channel | TBD | |
| Store of Value | TBD | |
| Supply Chain | TBD | |
| Support (Technical Analysis) | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Taker | TBD | |
| Tank | TBD | |
| Ticker | TBD | |
| Token | TBD | |
| Token Lockup | TBD | |
| Token Sale | TBD | |
| Total Supply | TBD | |
| Transaction ID (TXID) | TBD | |
| Transaction Hash | TBD | |
| Transaction Hash | TBD | |
| Transactions Per Section (TPS) | TBD | |
| Trustless | TBD | |
| Turing Complete | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of Account | TBD | |
| User Experience (UX) | TBD | |
| User Interface (UI) | TBD | |
| Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 👷 | Venture Capital | A form of private equity financing in which institutional investors or high net worth individuals provide an investment to a entrepreneur or startup in return for some level of equity or ownership of the venture. In the blockchain space, ownership can be in the form of traditional stock & cap tables or can be in the form of token distribution models. The investment provided by the VC entity is typically monetary but can also be non-monetary such as technical or managerial support. The goal of venture capital is to provide early stage venture (i.e., high risk) with the capital necessary to build and scale in return of potential high reward. |
| Virtual Machine | TBD | |
| Volatility | A measure of the price fluctuations or rate of return over a time period of an asset or portfolio. Modern Portfolio Theory assumes that volatility is equal to risk - higher volatily means higher risk. | |
| Volume | A measure of how much an asset is exchanged over a period of time. This measurement can be in the form of the number of shares of an asset exchanged or the value of the number assets exchanged. In crypto, volume is generally presented as the value of the number of cryptocurrency assets exchanged, with value represented as either US Dollar, Bitcoin, or Ethereum. |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Wallet | TBD | |
| Weak Hands | TBD | |
| Weak Subjectivity | TBD | |
| Web 1.0 | TBD | |
| Web 2.0 | TBD | |
| Web 3.0 | TBD | |
| Wei | TBD | |
| Whale | TBD | |
| Whiskers | TBD | |
| Whitelist | TBD | |
| Wrapped Ether (WETH) | TBD | |
| Wick (Technical Analysis) | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| XML (Extensible Markup Language) | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Yearn Finance | TBD | |
| Yield | TBD | |
| Yield Farming | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Zero-Knowledge Proofs | TBD | |
| ZK-Snarks | TBD |
| Legend | Term | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ! | TBD |