The crypto glossary A–Z
The words from the charts, the wallet pop-ups and the group chat. Get the meaning, see an example and follow the source.
Diamond hands
Holding through big price swings and pressure to sell, described in crypto chat as having an unshakable grip.
Digital signature
Cryptographic evidence that a message was authorized by the key corresponding to a verifying public key.
Double spending
An attempt to spend the same digital funds in two conflicting payments.
DYOR
Do your own research: check the claims yourself instead of taking a stranger's hype as the whole story.
ECDSA
Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm: a public-key method for creating and verifying digital signatures.
EIP
An Ethereum Improvement Proposal: a document describing a proposed technical change or standard.
EIP-1559
The Ethereum upgrade that introduced a dynamic execution base fee and revised transaction fee settings.
Encryption
Transforming readable data into a form that requires appropriate key material to recover.
Entropy
A measure of uncertainty that helps describe how unpredictable a cryptographic secret is.
Epoch
A group of slots used to organize consensus timing and related duties.
ERC-1155
An Ethereum standard that lets one contract manage multiple token types and transfer them in batches.
ERC-20
An Ethereum interface standard for fungible tokens, including balances, transfers and spending allowances.
ERC-4626
An Ethereum standard for tokenized vaults that manage an ERC-20 asset and issue vault shares.
ERC-721
An Ethereum token standard for individually identified non-fungible tokens.
Ether
Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency, usually written as ETH, used for transaction fees and staking.
Ethereum
A blockchain that runs programmable accounts and applications, with ether as its native asset.
Event log
Data emitted during contract execution that applications can read from transaction records.
EVM
The Ethereum Virtual Machine, which executes Ethereum contract bytecode according to shared rules.
Exit liquidity
The buying demand that lets someone else sell; in crypto slang, often the late buyers left after the hype fades.
Extended public key
A public key plus derivation information that can generate eligible non-hardened descendant public keys.
Externally owned account
An Ethereum account whose transactions are authorized by a private key, often abbreviated EOA.
Faucet
A service that distributes small amounts of test-network assets for development.
Fee rate
A transaction fee stated per unit of transaction size or weight-derived size.
Fee tier
A configured trading-fee level used by a pool or exchange mechanism.
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