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.
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.
Optimistic rollup
A rollup that accepts submitted execution results subject to a process for challenging invalid results.
Oracle
A mechanism that supplies information a blockchain application cannot directly obtain for itself.
Oracle manipulation
Influencing data an application treats as an authoritative input, such as its collateral price.
Order book
A collection of active buy and sell orders arranged by price and matching rules.
Overcollateralization
Backing a debt or position with collateral worth more than the obligation it supports.
Paper hands
A teasing or critical label for someone who sells quickly when the market gets shaky.
Passphrase
An additional secret that some wallet recovery schemes combine with recovery words to derive a wallet.
Pay to public key hash
A Bitcoin output type that requires a signature and public key matching a committed public-key hash.
Paymaster
An ERC-4337 contract that can pay gas costs for eligible smart-account operations.
Payment channel
A channel that updates payment balances without requiring an onchain transaction for every payment.
Pedersen commitment
A cryptographic commitment that hides a value using a blinding factor while binding the committer to that value.
Peer-to-peer
A network design where participants exchange information directly with other participants.
Peg
A target price relationship between an asset and a reference asset or value.
Permit
A signed authorization that lets someone submit an ERC-20 allowance change on the token owner's behalf.
Perpetual futures
Derivative contracts designed for ongoing price exposure without the ordinary expiration of dated futures.
Phishing
Deception that impersonates a trusted person or service to obtain secrets or harmful authorizations.
Preimage resistance
The difficulty of finding an input that produces a specified cryptographic hash output.
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Concept entries explain ideas. Our separate asset registry identifies coins, tokens and networks by source metadata. Sources & standards