A blockchain's production network, where its assets and transactions have their normal economic role.
Mainnet is the live environment, separate from networks used for testing. Deploying the same code or using a similar address on another network does not merge their histories or balances. The network selected in a wallet therefore matters just as much as recognizing the token name or account address.
IN THE WILD
"Testing went fine. This deployment is on mainnet, where the transactions and assets have their production role."
An asset's reference price multiplied by its estimated circulating supply.
Market cap turns a quoted price and supply estimate into a comparison figure. It does not measure how much money buyers have put in or how much could be withdrawn by selling. Both the price source and supply methodology matter, especially for a token with limited trading or disputed circulation.
IN THE WILD
My dashboard uses 10 million circulating tokens at a reference price of 2 to calculate a 20 million market cap.
An instruction to trade promptly against available liquidity under a venue's execution rules.
A market order prioritizes getting an execution rather than specifying a maximum buy price or minimum sell price. It can match several orders at different levels when the first level has insufficient quantity. A thin book therefore matters even if the displayed best price looks attractive.
IN THE WILD
Your market buy fills at the best ask, then reaches higher asks because the first level cannot cover the whole amount.
The stated upper limit on how many asset units can exist under the applicable rules.
A maximum supply is a ceiling, not a count of tokens currently circulating. Some assets have no fixed maximum at all. Where a cap exists, its significance depends on the enforcement rules and whether governance or an administrator has the power to change those rules.
IN THE WILD
"The cap is the ceiling, not today's circulation." The token still has fewer circulating units than its issuance limit.
A node’s local collection of valid pending transactions waiting for block inclusion.
When someone says 'it's in the mempool,' they usually mean a node has seen and accepted the transaction as pending. There isn't one universal waiting room. Nodes can see different transactions and apply different relay policies, so your wallet and an explorer may briefly show different pending information.
IN THE WILD
'My BTC transfer is still pending.' Several nodes have it in their mempools, but a miner hasn't included it yet.
Intermediate hashes used to check that an item belongs to a Merkle-root commitment.
Starting from the item, a verifier combines supplied hashes to reconstruct the expected root. A match establishes inclusion relative to that root. The verifier still needs a reason to accept the root itself; inclusion does not establish that an item's real-world claims are true.
IN THE WILD
"This payment belongs in that block." Your light client checks the proof against a block header it has verified.
The top-level hash that commits to the contents of a Merkle tree.
The root summarizes a particular collection under the tree's rules. Changing committed contents generally changes it. A proof can link one item to that root, but the root does not contain a readable copy of the collection or make the underlying data available to a verifier.
A tree of hashes that commits to many data items through one root hash.
Each layer combines commitments from below until only the root remains. This lets someone prove one item's inclusion without supplying every other item. Bitcoin builds a Merkle tree from transaction IDs to summarize a block's transactions, making compact inclusion checks possible for clients that have not downloaded them all.
IN THE WILD
Your light client gets the transaction and its path of hashes, rather than every transaction summarized by the tree.
Maximal extractable value: value available through controlling transaction inclusion, exclusion or ordering beyond ordinary rewards and fees.
A pending set of transactions can contain opportunities whose outcome depends on ordering. Searchers may construct arbitrage transactions, while validators or other block-building participants influence inclusion. MEV includes different behaviors, including harmful attacks, so the term describes a source of value rather than one particular trading strategy.
IN THE WILD
The transaction ordering creates a price gap, and a searcher's arbitrage captures value from that opportunity.
The process of building candidate blocks, searching for valid proof of work and publishing successful results.
Mining is more than receiving newly created coins. Miners choose transactions, assemble a candidate block and repeatedly change and hash its header data. A successful valid block can earn its allowed subsidy plus transaction fees. Other nodes still verify the result; computing power doesn't bypass validation.
IN THE WILD
A Bitcoin miner includes pending transactions, finds a qualifying hash and broadcasts the completed block to the network.
The daily pick rotates automatically. Our initial collection was published on October 9, 2026. New words join on their publication date. Every concept includes a reference.