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
37 terms shown
| Term | Category | In one sentence |
|---|---|---|
| Airdrop | Tokens & Supply | A free distribution of tokens to a set of addresses, usually selected by past activity, to spread ownership and reward early users. |
| Altcoin | Tokens & Supply | Any digital asset other than bitcoin; a loose market label rather than a technical category. |
| Buyback | Tokens & Supply | A protocol or company using its income to purchase its own token on the market, then either destroying or holding what it buys. |
| Circulating Supply | Tokens & Supply | The number of units of an asset currently held by the public and able to move, excluding locked or reserved units. |
| Delegation | Tokens & Supply | Assigning your voting power or your stake to someone who acts on your behalf, while you keep ownership of the tokens. |
| Dilution | Tokens & Supply | The fall in each holder's share of total supply that happens when new units are created and given to someone else. |
| ERC-20 | Tokens & Supply | The most widely used Ethereum standard for interchangeable tokens, defining how balances are read and transfers are authorized. |
| ERC-721 | Tokens & Supply | The Ethereum standard for non-fungible tokens, where every token has a unique identifier and exactly one owner. |
| Emission Schedule | Tokens & Supply | The published plan for how many new units will be created over time and who receives them. |
| Fee Switch | Tokens & Supply | A setting in a protocol's contracts that, when turned on, redirects part of the fees users already pay toward the protocol or its token holders. |
| Foundation | Tokens & Supply | A legal entity, often a non-profit, created to hold assets and fund work on a blockchain protocol that no single company owns. |
| Fungible Token | Tokens & Supply | A token whose units are interchangeable, so any one unit counts exactly the same as any other unit. |
| Governance Token | Tokens & Supply | A token that lets holders vote on changes to a protocol, such as parameters, budgets, and upgrades. |
| Inflation Rate (Token Supply) | Tokens & Supply | How fast a digital asset's supply is growing, expressed as a yearly percentage of the supply that already exists. |
| Initial Coin Offering | Tokens & Supply | A sale of a newly created token to the public to raise funds, typically before the product the token is meant for exists. |
| Insider Allocation | Tokens & Supply | The share of a token's supply reserved at launch for the founding team, employees, advisors, and early investors. |
| Liquid Staking | Tokens & Supply | Staking through a service that issues a tradable token representing your staked position, so the position remains usable elsewhere. |
| Maximum Supply | Tokens & Supply | The largest number of units that can ever exist, for assets whose rules impose a hard limit. |
| Native Asset | Tokens & Supply | The built-in asset of a blockchain itself, used to pay transaction fees and, on proof-of-stake networks, to secure the network. |
| Net Issuance | Tokens & Supply | New units created over a period minus units destroyed, showing whether supply actually grew or shrank. |
| Non-Fungible Token | Tokens & Supply | A token whose units are individually distinct, so each one has its own identifier and cannot be swapped one-for-one. |
| Quorum | Tokens & Supply | The minimum amount of voting power that must take part for a governance vote to count as valid. |
| Real Yield | Tokens & Supply | A return measured after subtracting the effect of newly created supply, or a return paid out of fees rather than out of newly minted tokens. |
| Restaking | Tokens & Supply | Reusing already-staked assets to secure additional services, which adds extra rewards and additional ways to lose the same stake. |
| Staking | Tokens & Supply | Locking up a digital asset to help run and secure a proof-of-stake blockchain, in return for a share of the rewards the network pays. |
| Staking Yield | Tokens & Supply | The rate of rewards a staker earns, usually quoted as a yearly percentage of the amount staked. |
| Token | Tokens & Supply | A unit of value or rights recorded on a blockchain, usually created by a smart contract rather than by the chain itself. |
| Token Burn | Tokens & Supply | Permanently destroying units of an asset, either by deleting them in the contract or by sending them where nobody can spend them. |
| Token Issuance | Tokens & Supply | The creation of new units of an asset, either by a blockchain's own rules or by a contract that mints tokens. |
| Token Standard | Tokens & Supply | A shared set of rules that tokens follow so wallets, exchanges, and other programs can handle them without custom code. |
| Total Supply | Tokens & Supply | Every unit of an asset that exists on-chain right now, including locked units, minus any that have been permanently destroyed. |
| Treasury (Protocol) | Tokens & Supply | The pool of assets a protocol or its governing organization controls, used to fund development, grants, and incentive programs. |
| Unlock Overhang | Tokens & Supply | The pool of still-locked tokens scheduled for future release, described as supply the market may later have to absorb. |
| Unlock Schedule | Tokens & Supply | The calendar showing when locked tokens become transferable and enter circulating supply. |
| Vesting | Tokens & Supply | A rule that releases an allocation of tokens gradually over time instead of all at once, usually for founders, staff, and early investors. |
| Voting Power | Tokens & Supply | How much influence an address has in a governance vote, usually determined by tokens held or tokens delegated to it. |
| Wrapped Token | Tokens & Supply | A token on one blockchain that represents an asset held somewhere else, so the asset can be used where it does not natively exist. |