A collection of active buy and sell orders arranged by price and matching rules.
An order book shows bids from buyers and asks from sellers, together with the quantities offered at each level. Orders can disappear when filled or canceled, so visible depth is a snapshot. Some venues also support orders that are not fully displayed, making the screen an incomplete view of all potential interest.
IN THE WILD
You open the book and see bids below the market, asks above it and different quantities at every price level.
Backing a debt or position with collateral worth more than the obligation it supports.
The extra collateral creates a buffer rather than making a loan risk-free. Its price can move, interest can add to the debt, and liquidation rules can act before collateral reaches the debt's value. The required buffer depends on the assets and protocol, so “overcollateralized” describes a relationship, not a promise of safety.
IN THE WILD
A position has $1,000 of collateral backing $400 of debt; it starts overcollateralized, but falling collateral prices can shrink that buffer.
An additional secret that some wallet recovery schemes combine with recovery words to derive a wallet.
In BIP-39, the passphrase changes the seed derived from the words. Different passphrases therefore lead to different wallets, even when the words match. This is separate from an app's unlock password. Recovery needs the correct combination, so preserving only the words can leave access incomplete.
IN THE WILD
"Same recovery words, different BIP-39 passphrase, different wallet. This is not just changing the app's unlock password."
An ERC-4337 contract that can pay gas costs for eligible smart-account operations.
A paymaster lets someone other than the user cover an operation's network cost under defined rules. An app might sponsor a first transaction or arrange payment through another asset. The work still costs gas, and sponsorship can have conditions or limits, so “gasless” usually describes the user's experience rather than a free network.
IN THE WILD
Your first app transaction has no ETH charge to you because its paymaster covers the gas after checking that the operation qualifies.
A channel that updates payment balances without requiring an onchain transaction for every payment.
Participants commit funds and exchange enforceable updates about who can claim which amounts. Opening and closing still involve the blockchain. A funded channel also has directional liquidity: money available on one side does not automatically make an equally large payment possible in the opposite direction.
IN THE WILD
You make several Lightning payments by updating channel balances, without publishing a separate onchain transaction for each one.
A network design where participants exchange information directly with other participants.
Instead of every blockchain client depending on one mandatory central server, clients connect to peers and pass along transactions and blocks. Information can reach you through several routes. Peer-to-peer describes those connections; it doesn't mean every peer is honest or that no hosted services exist around the network.
IN THE WILD
Your Bitcoinnode hears about a new block from one peer and forwards it to other connected peers.
A target price relationship between an asset and a reference asset or value.
A peg is what the asset is meant to track; the market price tells you how closely it's doing that right now. Keeping the relationship usually needs some mechanism, such as redemption, collateral or incentives. A token trading away from its target has deviated from its peg, even if its name still suggests stability.
IN THE WILD
A stablecoin targets $1 but trades at $0.97, so people describe it as below its peg while checking whether redemption still works.
A signed authorization that lets someone submit an ERC-20allowance change on the token owner's behalf.
The owner signs a message instead of sending the usual approval transaction. ERC-2612 binds it to a spender, amount, nonce and deadline. Anyone can submit a valid permit under the standard, so signing can create meaningful spending permission even when no token transfer happens immediately.
IN THE WILD
You sign a permit for a named spender and limited amount; a relayer submits it to record the allowance onchain.
Derivative contracts designed for ongoing price exposure without the ordinary expiration of dated futures.
A perp position tracks price exposure rather than buying the underlying coins. Margin supports the position, and funding commonly helps align its price with the reference market. Conventional crypto perps have no ordinary expiry, but products using perpetual-style branding can have different settlement or expiry terms in their specifications.
IN THE WILD
"I'm long BTC through a perp contract; I don't own spot BTC from opening that position."
Deception that impersonates a trusted person or service to obtain secrets or harmful authorizations.
In crypto, a phishing page may request recovery words, token approvals or signatures instead of a conventional password. It often arrives through a believable support message or familiar-looking interface. The request matters: connecting a wallet and authorizing spending are different actions, even on a convincing website.
IN THE WILD
The support DM asks for recovery words to "verify" your wallet. That is a phishing request for the material controlling it.
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.