The Words of Crypto
Time to understand the language of blockchain, DeFi, NFT and Web3.
Airdrop
A crypto airdrop is the free distribution of tokens to wallet addresses, typically used by projects to bootstrap users, reward early adopters, or decentralize ownership of a protocol.
Altcoin
An altcoin is any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. The term combines "alternative" and "coin" and includes thousands of digital assets like Ethereum, Solana, BNB, and XRP, each designed with different use cases and technologies.
AMM
An AMM (Automated Market Maker) is the algorithm behind decentralized exchanges that prices and settles trades against a liquidity pool using a mathematical formula, instead of matching buyers and sellers through a traditional order book.
Aster DEX
Aster DEX is a multi-chain decentralized perpetual futures exchange supporting up to 200x leverage across BNB Smart Chain, Ethereum, Arbitrum, and other networks, allowing traders to open leveraged positions from their self-custody wallet.
ATH
ATH stands for "all-time high" — the highest price a cryptocurrency has ever reached. It's a key reference point traders use to gauge momentum, sentiment, and how far an asset is from its peak.
Bear Market
bear market is a prolonged period of falling prices and negative sentiment, typically defined as a decline of 20% or more from recent highs, where investors expect prices to keep dropping.
Binary Option
A binary option is a fixed-payoff financial contract that pays a set amount if an underlying asset's price meets a condition at expiry — structurally similar to a prediction-market share, but tied to asset prices rather than real-world events and traded against a broker rather than other participants.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin (BTC) is the first and most widely recognized cryptocurrency, created in 2009 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto as a decentralized peer-to-peer digital currency that operates without banks or governments.
Block
A node is any computer that connects to a blockchain network and helps maintain it by storing, validating, and relaying transactions and blocks.
Blockchain
A blockchain is a decentralized, distributed digital ledger that records transactions across a network of computers, making the data transparent, secure, and nearly impossible to alter.
Bridge
A blockchain bridge is a tool that lets you move tokens and data between different blockchains, enabling assets on one network to be used on another that would otherwise be incompatible.
Bull Market
A bull market is a prolonged period of rising prices and optimistic sentiment, typically defined as a gain of 20% or more from recent lows, where investors expect prices to keep climbing.
Cold Wallet
A cold wallet stores your private keys completely offline, making it immune to remote hacks. It is the most secure method for storing large amounts of cryptocurrency long-term.
Consensus Mechanism
A consensus mechanism is the set of rules a blockchain uses to let distributed, trustless participants agree on the validity of transactions and the state of the ledger — without any central authority.
Cross Margin
Cross margin is a trading mode in which the entire account balance is used as collateral for all open positions, increasing capital efficiency but putting the full balance at risk of liquidation.
Cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security and operates on a decentralized blockchain network, enabling peer-to-peer transactions without intermediaries like banks.
DAO
A DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is an internet-native organization governed by its members through rules encoded in smart contracts and on-chain voting, rather than by a central management team.
dApp
A dApp (decentralized application) runs on a blockchain using smart contracts instead of a central server — giving users direct control without a company in the middle
DeFi (Decentralized Finance)
DeFi, short for Decentralized Finance, is a financial ecosystem built on blockchain technology that replaces traditional intermediaries like banks and brokers with smart contracts, enabling open, permissionless lending, borrowing, trading, and earning.
DEX
A DEX (decentralized exchange) lets you trade cryptocurrency directly from your wallet using smart contracts — no company holds your funds or requires an account.
Ethereum
Ethereum (ETH) is a decentralized blockchain platform that enables smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps), serving as the foundation for DeFi, NFTs, and much of the Web3 ecosystem.
Event Contract
An event contract is a financial instrument whose payoff depends on whether a specific real-world event occurs by a defined date — the underlying primitive of prediction markets and the regulatory term used by the CFTC for venues like Kalshi.
Fork
A fork is a change to a blockchain's protocol that causes the chain to diverge a soft fork is backward-compatible, while a hard fork creates a permanent split that can result in a new, separate cryptocurrency.
Funding Rate
The funding rate is a periodic payment exchanged between long and short traders in perpetual futures markets that keeps the perpetual contract price aligned with the underlying asset's spot price.
Gas Fees
Gas fees are payments made to blockchain validators for processing transactions. On Ethereum, fees are paid in ETH and vary based on network demand.
Governance Token
A governance token is a cryptocurrency that grants its holders voting rights over a protocol or DAO, letting them propose and decide on changes such as upgrades, fees, and treasury spending.
Halving
A halving is a pre-programmed event in which the reward miners receive for adding a new block is cut in half, reducing the rate at which new coins are created most famously Bitcoin's halving every 210,000 blocks (roughly every four years).
Hash
A hash is a fixed-length string of characters produced by running data through a cryptographic hash function; in blockchain, hashes uniquely fingerprint blocks and transactions and secure the chain against tampering.
HIP-4
HIP-4 (Hyperliquid Improvement Proposal 4) introduces native prediction-market primitives to the Hyperliquid Layer-1 blockchain, letting event contracts settle alongside Hyperliquid's existing on-chain perpetuals order book in self-custody.
HODL
HODL is a crypto slang term for holding onto your cryptocurrency long-term instead of selling, regardless of price swings — it originated from a misspelling of "hold" and is now often backronymed to "Hold On for Dear Life."
Hot Wallet
A hot wallet is a crypto wallet that stays connected to the internet. It offers fast access and easy transactions, making it ideal for everyday crypto use.
Hyperliquid
Hyperliquid is a decentralized perpetual futures exchange that runs on its own Layer-1 blockchain (HyperEVM), offering high-speed on-chain order-book trading with support for crypto, equity, and commodity perpetuals.
Impermanent Loss
Impermanent loss is the temporary loss a liquidity provider experiences when the prices of the two tokens in a pool diverge, leaving the position worth less than if the tokens had simply been held.
Isolated Margin
Isolated margin is a trading mode in which a specific amount of collateral is allocated to a single position, containing liquidation risk to that position and protecting the rest of the trader's account.
Layer 1
A Layer 1 (L1) is a base blockchain network — such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Solana — that processes and finalizes transactions on its own and provides the foundational security that Layer 2s build on top of.
Layer 2
A Layer 2 (L2) is a secondary network built on top of a base blockchain (Layer 1) that processes transactions off the main chain to make them faster and cheaper, while inheriting the security of the underlying Layer 1.
Leverage (Crypto Trading)
Leverage in crypto trading is the use of borrowed capital to open a position larger than a trader's own funds, multiplying both potential gains and losses by the leverage ratio.
Limit Order
A limit order is an instruction to buy or sell a token only at a specified price or better; instead of executing immediately at the current market rate, it waits until the market reaches your target price.
Liquidation
Liquidation is the automatic closure of a leveraged trading position when losses consume the trader's margin, triggered at a predetermined liquidation price to prevent further loss to the exchange or protocol.
Long Position
A long position in crypto trading is a bet that an asset's price will rise — the trader profits when the price goes up and loses when it goes down.
Margin (Trading)
Margin in crypto trading is the collateral a trader posts to open a leveraged position, determining both the size of the position and how much price movement the position can absorb before liquidation.
Market Cap
Market cap (market capitalization) is the total value of a cryptocurrency, calculated by multiplying its current price by its circulating supply — used to gauge a coin's relative size and rank.
Market Order
A market order is an instruction to buy or sell a token immediately at the best price currently available, prioritizing speed of execution over a specific price.
Mempool
The mempool (memory pool) is the waiting area where valid but unconfirmed transactions are held by each node before being selected by miners or validators for inclusion in a block.
Mining
Mining is the process of validating transactions and adding new blocks to a Proof-of-Work blockchain by solving complex mathematical puzzles, in exchange for newly minted coins and transaction fees.
NFT (Non-Fungible Token)
A unique digital asset stored on a blockchain that cannot be replicated or exchanged on a one-to-one basis. NFTs represent ownership of digital items like art, music, collectibles, and in-game assets.
Node
A node is any computer that connects to a blockchain network and helps maintain it by storing, validating, and relaying transactions and blocks.
Non-Custodial Wallet
A non-custodial wallet gives you full ownership of your private keys. No company can access, freeze, or lose your funds — you are your own bank.
On-Chain Perpetuals
On-chain perpetuals are perpetual futures contracts where order matching, settlement, and collateral custody all happen on a blockchain, allowing traders to open leveraged positions without handing over custody to a centralized exchange.
Onchain Prediction Markets
Onchain prediction markets are crypto-native event-trading platforms where market creation, trading, and resolution all happen via smart contracts, removing the need for a centralized operator and letting users trade from a self-custody wallet.
Open Interest
Open interest is the total number of outstanding derivative contracts — such as perpetual futures — that have not yet been closed or settled, used as a key indicator of market participation and liquidity.
Outcome Token
n outcome token is a tokenized share representing one possible result of a prediction market — typically a "Yes" or "No" share that pays $1 if its outcome occurs and $0 if it doesn't, with the live price reflecting the market's implied probability.
Perpetual Futures (Perps)
Perpetual futures (perps) are leveraged crypto derivatives with no expiry date, letting traders go long or short on an asset's price with leverage while the contract price is kept aligned to the spot market via a periodic funding rate.
Polymarket
Polymarket is the largest decentralized prediction-market platform, where users trade shares in real-world event outcomes using USDC on Polygon, with markets resolved by the UMA optimistic oracle.
Predict.fun
Predict.fun is an onchain prediction-market platform on BNB Chain that lets users trade event contracts in self-custody while earning yield on idle USDC collateral through Venus integration.
Prediction Market
A prediction market is a marketplace where users buy and sell shares tied to the outcomes of future events, with prices that map directly to the crowd's implied probability of those outcomes occurring.
Private Key
A private key is a secret cryptographic code that gives you full control of your cryptocurrency. Anyone with access to your private key controls your funds.
Proof of Stake
Proof of Stake (PoS) is a consensus mechanism in which validators are chosen to create new blocks based on the amount of cryptocurrency they lock up as collateral (stake), rather than by expending computing power making it far more energy-efficient than Proof of Work.
Proof of Work
Proof of Work (PoW) is the original blockchain consensus mechanism, used by Bitcoin, in which miners compete to solve a computationally intensive puzzle to validate transactions and earn the right to add the next block.
Public Key
A public key is your shareable blockchain identifier derived from your private key. Share it to receive crypto — it cannot be used to access or move your funds.
Resolution Source
A resolution source is the data feed, oracle, or designated authority that determines the final outcome of a prediction market or event contract — the single most important design choice for any market, since it dictates how disputes are settled and how trustworthy the payoff is.
Rollup
A rollup is a Layer 2 scaling solution that bundles ("rolls up") many transactions into a single batch processed off-chain, then posts compressed data back to the Layer 1 — lowering fees while inheriting the base chain's security.
RWA Perpetuals
RWA perpetuals are perpetual futures contracts based on real-world assets such as US equities, commodities, foreign exchange, and bonds — allowing crypto users to trade leveraged exposure to non-crypto markets directly from a self-custody wallet.
Seed Phrase
A sequence of 12 to 24 randomly generated words that serves as the master key to your crypto wallet. Anyone with your seed phrase can access your funds, so it must be kept offline and private.
Self-Custody Trading
Self-custody trading is the practice of executing trades — including spot and leveraged derivatives — directly from a wallet whose private keys are controlled by the user, eliminating counterparty risk from exchanges or custodians.
Short Position
A short position in crypto trading is a bet that an asset's price will fall — the trader profits when the price goes down and loses when it goes up.
Slippage
Slippage is the difference between the expected price of a crypto trade and the price at which it actually executes, usually caused by price movement or low liquidity between the time an order is placed and filled.
Smart Contract
A smart contract is self-executing code stored on a blockchain that automatically enforces agreement terms when predefined conditions are met — no intermediaries needed.
Staking
Staking is the process of locking up cryptocurrency in a blockchain network to help validate transactions and secure the network, earning rewards in return. It is a core feature of Proof of Stake blockchains.
Stop-Loss Order
A stop-loss order is an instruction to automatically sell a token once it falls to a specified price, used to limit losses and protect capital if the market moves against you.
Take-Profit Order
A take-profit order is an instruction to automatically sell a token once it rises to a target price, locking in gains without having to monitor the market manually.
Token
A token is a digital asset created and managed on an existing blockchain (such as Ethereum), representing anything from currency and governance rights to real-world assets or access to a service unlike a coin, which is native to its own blockchain.
TVL
TVL (Total Value Locked) is a key DeFi metric that measures the total value of crypto assets deposited in a protocol — used to gauge its size, adoption, and overall health.
Whale
A whale is an individual or entity that holds a very large amount of a cryptocurrency — enough that their buying or selling can significantly influence the market price.
World Cup 2026 Prediction Market
A World Cup 2026 prediction market is an on-chain market where participants can explore outcomes of the FIFA World Cup — such as the tournament winner or individual match results through tradable contracts whose prices reflect the crowd's view of each outcome's likelihood.
World Cup Final Market
A World Cup final market is a prediction market for the outcome of the championship match, where contracts cover results such as which team wins the final — reaching peak interest on the day of the final, July 19, 2026.
World Cup Group Stage Market
A World Cup group stage market is a prediction market covering the tournament's opening phase such as which team wins a group or which teams advance — before the knockout rounds begin.
World Cup Knockout Market
A World Cup knockout market is a prediction market for the tournament's single-elimination rounds — from the Round of 32 through the Round of 16, quarter-finals, and semi-finals — where each result decides which team advances.
World Cup Match Market
A World Cup match market is a prediction market for the outcome of a single game — including 1X2 (home win, draw, away win) and over/under goals contracts — covering one match rather than the whole tournament.
World Cup Top Scorer Market
A World Cup top scorer market is a prediction market for the tournament's Golden Boot — the player who scores the most goals — where each contender has a contract reflecting their perceived chance of finishing as top goalscorer.
World Cup Winner Market
A World Cup winner market is a prediction market for the outright champion of the tournament, where each participating nation has a contract whose price reflects its perceived chance of lifting the trophy.
