Glossary

Crypto glossary

1,000+ crypto terms, each with a simple definition, a longer explanation and examples.

1,000+ terms

1inch Fusion
1inch Fusion is a swap mode from the 1inch aggregator where you sign an order and approved professional traders, called resolvers, compete to fill it.
51% Attack
A 51% attack is what happens when one group controls more than half a network's power.
a16z Crypto
a16z Crypto is the crypto investment arm of Andreessen Horowitz, a large Silicon Valley venture capital firm.
Aave
Aave is a lending protocol where depositors supply crypto to shared pools and borrowers take loans from those pools by posting collateral worth more than they borrow.
Aave aToken
An Aave aToken is the receipt token a lender receives when they deposit crypto into the Aave lending protocol.
Aave Governance Forum
The Aave Governance Forum is the public discussion website, at governance.aave.com, where changes to the Aave lending protocol are proposed and debated before token holders vote on them.
Aave Safety Module
The Aave Safety Module is a pool of staked AAVE that acts as a backstop for the protocol.
AccessControl
AccessControl is a widely used pattern for giving a smart contract several named roles instead of one all-powerful owner.
Account Abstraction
Account abstraction lets a crypto wallet be a programmable smart contract instead of a single secret key, so it can offer features like recovering access through trusted contacts or letting an app pay the fees.
Across Protocol
Across Protocol is an intent-based bridge that moves tokens between Ethereum and other blockchains by having relayers deliver funds on the destination chain quickly from their own capital.
Active Addresses
Active addresses are the individual wallets or accounts that are actually sending or receiving cryptocurrency during a specific time period.
Actively Validated Service (AVS)
An actively validated service, or AVS, is a service such as an oracle, a bridge or a data availability layer that borrows its security from restaked ETH so it does not have to build its own validator network.
Address Clustering
Address clustering is a set of analysis techniques that group different blockchain addresses together because they probably belong to the same person or organization.
Address Compartmentalization
Address compartmentalization means using separate wallets or addresses for separate purposes, such as savings, trading and public activity, so that one exposed address reveals little about the rest.
Address Freeze
An address freeze is when a stablecoin issuer blocks a specific wallet address so the tokens in it can no longer be sent.
Address Label
An address label is a human-readable name attached to a blockchain address, such as the name of an exchange's hot wallet or a known hacker.
Address Poisoning
Address poisoning is a scam in which an attacker places a fake address that looks almost identical to one you use into your wallet's transaction history.
Admin Key
An admin key is a private key, usually held by a project's team, that can change how a smart contract behaves, such as pausing it, upgrading its code or moving funds.
Advance-Fee Fraud
Advance-fee fraud is a scam in which you are told you can receive money, such as a prize, an inheritance or your own frozen funds, but only after paying a fee first.
Aerodrome (AERO)
Aerodrome is a decentralized exchange on Base, an Ethereum layer two, built on the ve(3,3) design.
Agent Wallet
An agent wallet is a crypto wallet used by an automated software agent so it can pay for things without a person approving every payment.
Agent-Based Simulation
Agent-based simulation models a system as many individual participants, each following its own simple rules, then runs the whole thing forward to see what behavior emerges.
AggLayer
AggLayer is a settlement layer built by the Polygon team that lets many separate chains behave more like one network.
AI Agent
An AI agent is software built on a large language model that can plan steps and take actions by itself, such as searching the web, calling tools or sending transactions, instead of only answering questions.
AI Stewards
AI stewards are an idea described by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin for software agents that help people take part in DAO governance by summarizing proposals and voting on routine matters according to their owner's stated values.
AI/HPC Pivot
The AI/HPC pivot is the move by Bitcoin mining companies to use their power connections, land and cooling for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) data centers.
Air-Gapped Wallet
An air-gapped wallet is a signing device that never connects to the internet or to another device by cable or wireless link, and passes transactions in and out only by QR code or memory card.
Airdrop
An airdrop is when a cryptocurrency project gives away free tokens to people's digital wallets.
Akash Network (AKT)
Akash Network is a decentralized marketplace for cloud computing, where people who need servers or graphics processors rent them from independent providers around the world.
Alchemy
Alchemy is a company that runs blockchain nodes and rents access to them, so a wallet or an application can read the chain and send transactions without operating servers of its own.
Allora
Allora is a network that produces predictions on request and delivers them on-chain, so a smart contract can ask a question and act on the answer.
Alpha
Alpha is special information about a cryptocurrency or investment that most people don't know yet.
Alt Mempool
The alt mempool is a separate waiting area for smart-account requests.
Altcoin
Altcoin is short for alternative coin and means any cryptocurrency that is not Bitcoin.
AML (Anti-Money Laundering)
AML rules are like security checks banks use to make sure money isn't coming from crime or being hidden illegally.
Amplification Coefficient
The amplification coefficient, usually called A, is the setting in Curve's StableSwap pools that controls how flat the pricing curve is around the point where the pool's tokens are balanced.
Anchoring
Anchoring is the habit of leaning too heavily on the first number you saw, such as the price you paid or a coin's all-time high, when making later decisions.
Anvil
Anvil is a blockchain that runs on a developer's own machine for testing.
Ape In
Jumping into a crypto investment super fast without checking it out first—kind of like buying a car without test driving it.
App-Chain
An app-chain is a blockchain built to run a single application instead of sharing a general-purpose chain with many other apps.
Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC)
An application-specific integrated circuit, or ASIC, is a computer chip designed to do one job, and in crypto that job is usually mining.
APR (Annual Percentage Rate)
APR is the simple yearly rate.
APY (Annual Percentage Yield)
APY shows what a rate would grow to over a year if every payout were immediately reinvested.
Arbitrage
Arbitrage is buying something where it is cheaper and selling it where it is more expensive at almost the same time, to profit from the price gap.
Arbitrum BoLD
Arbitrum BoLD is the system that lets anybody challenge an incorrect claim about the state of the Arbitrum chain, and its name stands for Bounded Liquidity Delay.
Arbitrum One
Arbitrum One is a layer 2 network built on top of Ethereum by Offchain Labs, where people use the same kinds of apps as on Ethereum for much lower fees.
Arbitrum Orbit
Arbitrum Orbit is a framework from Offchain Labs that lets teams launch their own blockchain using the same technology as Arbitrum One.
Archive Node
An archive node is a blockchain node that keeps a complete record of what every account and contract held at every point in the network's history.
Arkham Intelligence
Arkham Intelligence, often just called Arkham, is a blockchain analytics platform that labels wallet addresses with the names of the people, companies and funds believed to own them.
Arweave (AR)
Arweave is a storage network where you pay once to upload a file and the network aims to keep it available for at least two hundred years.
Ascending Triangle
An ascending triangle is a chart pattern where the price bounces between a flat ceiling and a rising floor, like a ball bouncing higher with each bounce but hitting the same roof.
ASI Alliance
The ASI Alliance, short for Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, is a group formed when the AI-focused crypto projects Fetch.ai, SingularityNET and Ocean Protocol agreed to combine their tokens into one.
ASIC Efficiency (J/TH)
ASIC efficiency, measured in joules per terahash (J/TH), tells you how much energy a mining machine uses to perform one trillion hash calculations.
Asset
An asset is anything worth money that you own.
Assets Under Custody (AUC)
Assets under custody (AUC) is the total value of the assets a custodian holds and safeguards for its clients.
ASU 2023-08
ASU 2023-08 is a US accounting rule, issued in December 2023 by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, that lets companies show their crypto holdings at current market value.
ATH (All-Time High)
ATH is the highest price a cryptocurrency has ever reached.
Atomic Arbitrage
Atomic arbitrage is buying something where it is cheap and selling it where it is dear, with every step packed into a single blockchain transaction so that either the whole trade happens or none of it does.
Atomic Swap
An atomic swap is a trade of coins between two people on different blockchains that either completes fully for both sides or does not happen at all, with no exchange holding the funds in between.
AURA Blockchain Consortium
The AURA Blockchain Consortium is a group of luxury companies, started by LVMH, that uses a shared blockchain to give high-end products a digital certificate of authenticity.

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