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
18 terms shown
| Term | Category | In one sentence |
|---|---|---|
| MEV | Consensus & Security | The extra value a block producer can capture by choosing which transactions go into a block and in what order. |
| MPC Wallet | Custody & Access | A wallet in which a private key is split into shares held by different parties and never exists whole in any one place. |
| Mainnet | Foundations | The live network where transactions carry real value and are permanent, as opposed to a practice network. |
| Maker and Taker Fees | Market Structure | Exchange fees that charge less to orders which wait in the book and more to orders that trade immediately against them. |
| Mark Price | Market Structure | The reference price a derivatives venue uses to value open positions and decide liquidations, drawn from several outside spot markets. |
| Market Capitalization | Data & Measurement | The circulating supply of an asset multiplied by its current price, used as a rough measure of relative size. |
| Market Depth | Market Structure | A measure of how much can be traded before the price moves by a set amount, usually read from resting orders near the quote. |
| Market Maker | Market Structure | A firm or program that continuously offers to both purchase and sell an asset, earning the spread for providing that service. |
| Market Structure Regulation | Regulation & Policy | Rules governing who may operate a trading venue, how orders are matched and reported, and how customer assets and conflicts must be handled. |
| Maximum Supply | Tokens & Supply | The largest number of units that can ever exist, for assets whose rules impose a hard limit. |
| Mempool | Consensus & Security | The waiting area of transactions that have been broadcast to the network but not yet included in a block. |
| Merkle Tree | Cryptography | A structure that hashes items in pairs repeatedly until one hash represents them all, so any single item can be checked cheaply. |
| Methodology | Data & Measurement | The documented rules a provider uses to define and calculate a metric, including what is counted and what is left out. |
| MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) | Regulation & Policy | The European Union's single rulebook for digital assets, covering token issuers, stablecoins, and service providers across all member states. |
| Mining | Consensus & Security | The process of competing to add the next block in a proof-of-work network, done by machines that guess hashes at high speed. |
| Mining Difficulty | Consensus & Security | A number the network raises or lowers so blocks keep arriving at the intended average pace, whatever mining power joins or leaves. |
| Modular Blockchain | Scaling & Infrastructure | A design where separate systems handle execution, settlement, consensus, and data publication instead of one chain doing everything. |
| Multisignature Wallet | Custody & Access | A wallet that requires several separate keys to approve a transaction, such as two of three or three of five. |