Reference
Glossary
Every term you will meet on this site and most you will meet elsewhere, defined in one sentence a beginner can read and then explained properly. Where a term is routinely misunderstood, the entry says how.
Consensus & Security22Cryptography8Custody & Access15Data & Measurement27DeFi17Foundations20Institutional Access13Market Structure28Regulation & Policy19Risk & Failure Modes23Scaling & Infrastructure18Stablecoins13Tokens & Supply37
23 terms shown
| Term | Category | In one sentence |
|---|---|---|
| Admin Key Risk | Risk & Failure Modes | The risk created when a small group holds keys able to change, pause, or drain a protocol that presents itself as automatic. |
| Bankruptcy Claim | Risk & Failure Modes | A creditor's legal claim in a failed company's court process, which determines who gets paid, how much, and in what order. |
| Bridge Exploit | Risk & Failure Modes | An attack on the software that moves assets between blockchains, usually by faking the proof that a deposit happened on the other chain. |
| Censorship Risk | Risk & Failure Modes | The risk that certain transactions are excluded or delayed because the parties who order transactions choose, or are required, to leave them out. |
| Centralization Risk | Risk & Failure Modes | The risk that a system described as decentralized actually depends on a small number of operators, keys, or service providers. |
| Client Concentration | Risk & Failure Modes | The share of a network's nodes running the same software implementation, where a single bug could affect all of them together. |
| Concentration Risk | Risk & Failure Modes | The risk created when a large share of something, such as supply, deposits, or trading activity, sits with a few holders or venues. |
| Counterparty Risk | Risk & Failure Modes | The risk that the other side of an arrangement, such as an exchange, lender, or issuer, fails to deliver what it owes you. |
| Depeg Risk | Risk & Failure Modes | The risk that a token designed to hold a steady value, usually one dollar, trades away from that value. |
| Dusting Attack | Risk & Failure Modes | Sending tiny amounts of an asset to many addresses so the sender can watch how those amounts later move and link addresses to one owner. |
| Exit Scam | Risk & Failure Modes | When a business holding customer funds stops honoring withdrawals and its operators disappear with the balance. |
| Front-Running | Risk & Failure Modes | Seeing a pending transaction and placing your own ahead of it to profit from the price move it will cause. |
| Governance Attack | Risk & Failure Modes | Acquiring enough voting power in a protocol to pass a proposal that hands its assets or its controls to the attacker. |
| Insolvency | Risk & Failure Modes | When a firm's liabilities exceed its assets, or it can no longer pay what it owes as obligations fall due. |
| Insurance Fund | Risk & Failure Modes | A pool of assets a trading venue or protocol sets aside to absorb losses when a liquidation fails to cover a debt. |
| Liquidity Risk | Risk & Failure Modes | The risk that a position cannot be traded at a reasonable price because there are not enough willing buyers or sellers at that moment. |
| Oracle Failure | Risk & Failure Modes | When the outside data a blockchain application depends on, usually a price, is wrong, delayed, or manipulated, and the application acts on it anyway. |
| Protocol Emergency Pause | Risk & Failure Modes | A built-in switch letting designated parties freeze some or all of a protocol's functions during an attack or a discovered bug. |
| Rug Pull | Risk & Failure Modes | When the people behind a token remove the money backing it, or sell their own large holding, leaving buyers with something they cannot sell. |
| Sandwich Attack | Risk & Failure Modes | Placing one trade immediately before and another immediately after someone else's swap, so their trade moves the price in your favor. |
| Smart Contract Risk | Risk & Failure Modes | The risk that the code running a blockchain application behaves differently from what users expect, and money is lost as a result. |
| Upgradeability Risk | Risk & Failure Modes | The risk that the code holding your funds can be replaced with different code after you have deposited. |
| Validator Concentration | Risk & Failure Modes | How much of a proof-of-stake network's voting power sits with a small number of operators or staking services. |