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.
Liquidity pool
Assets held under a protocol’s rules to support activities such as swaps or lending.
Liquidity provider
A participant who supplies assets for a protocol’s trading, lending or other liquidity needs.
Loan-to-value
A loan’s value relative to its collateral value, often expressed as a percentage.
LP token
A token representing a liquidity provider’s claim on a pool or liquidity position.
Mainnet
A blockchain's production network, where its assets and transactions have their normal economic role.
Market capitalization
An asset's reference price multiplied by its estimated circulating supply.
Market order
An instruction to trade promptly against available liquidity under a venue's execution rules.
Maximum supply
The stated upper limit on how many asset units can exist under the applicable rules.
Mempool
A node’s local collection of valid pending transactions waiting for block inclusion.
Merkle proof
Intermediate hashes used to check that an item belongs to a Merkle-root commitment.
Merkle root
The top-level hash that commits to the contents of a Merkle tree.
Merkle tree
A tree of hashes that commits to many data items through one root hash.
MEV
Maximal extractable value: value available through controlling transaction inclusion, exclusion or ordering beyond ordinary rewards and fees.
Mining
The process of building candidate blocks, searching for valid proof of work and publishing successful results.
Mining difficulty
A measure of how hard it is to find a proof-of-work hash that meets the network’s target.
Mining pool
A group of miners that coordinates work and shares rewards using an agreed payout scheme.
Multisig
An authorization arrangement that requires signatures from a specified number of distinct keys.
NFA
Not financial advice: the shorthand disclaimer often attached to crypto opinions and market takes.
NFT metadata
Descriptive data linked to an NFT, such as its name, attributes and media references.
NGMI
Not gonna make it: a skeptical reply, a put-down or a joke about your own bad crypto decision.
Node
A computer or software instance participating in a blockchain network.
Non-fungible token
A token with an individual identity rather than interchangeable units, commonly called an NFT.
OG
An early participant or long-time familiar face in a crypto project or community.
Opcode
A basic instruction understood by a virtual machine or scripting system.
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Concept entries explain ideas. Our separate asset registry identifies coins, tokens and networks by source metadata. Sources & standards