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 & Security 22Cryptography 8Custody & Access 15Data & Measurement 27DeFi 17Foundations 20Institutional Access 13Market Structure 28Regulation & Policy 19Risk & Failure Modes 23Scaling & Infrastructure 18Stablecoins 13Tokens & Supply 37
17 terms shown
| Term | Category | In one sentence |
|---|---|---|
| Account Abstraction | Scaling & Infrastructure | Letting a user's account be a programmable contract, so rules such as spending limits or social recovery replace a single private key. |
| Account Model | Foundations | An accounting design where the network stores a running balance for each account, like rows in a ledger. |
| Accounting Treatment of Digital Assets | Regulation & Policy | The rules deciding how a company records the digital assets it holds in its published financial statements. |
| Accredited Investor | Regulation & Policy | A person or institution meeting income, wealth, or professional criteria that permits them to buy investments not registered for public sale. |
| Active Address | Data & Measurement | The number of distinct blockchain addresses that sent or received a transaction during a chosen period. |
| Address | Foundations | A string of characters identifying where digital assets can be sent, usually derived from a public key. |
| Address Clustering | Data & Measurement | Grouping blockchain addresses that appear to be controlled by the same person or company so activity can be counted per entity. |
| Address Poisoning | Custody & Access | A scam that plants a look-alike address in your transaction history so you copy it by mistake when you next pay. |
| 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. |
| Aggregator | DeFi | A service that searches many trading venues or yield sources at once and routes a transaction to the best terms it can find. |
| 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. |
| Algorithmic Stablecoin | Stablecoins | A stablecoin that attempts to keep its value through supply rules and trading incentives rather than by holding reserves. |
| Altcoin | Tokens & Supply | Any digital asset other than bitcoin; a loose market label rather than a technical category. |
| Anti-Money Laundering | Regulation & Policy | The body of law and controls requiring financial firms to detect, prevent, and report attempts to disguise the origin of criminal funds. |
| Arbitrage | Market Structure | Trading the same asset on two venues at the same time to capture a price difference between them. |
| Authorized Participant | Institutional Access | A large broker-dealer permitted to create and redeem fund shares directly with the fund, which keeps the share price near the value of the holdings. |
| Automated Market Maker | DeFi | A smart contract that prices trades from a formula and a pool of assets, so no other trader needs to be on the other side. |