The Dictionary
Explore 336+ clear, technical, and objective definitions defining the decentralized future.
Recently Defined
Custody
Custody describes who controls the private keys required to access and move cryptocurrency. In a self-custody arrangement, the user controls their own private keys or secret recovery phrase. In a custodial arrangement, an exchange, platform, broker, bot provider, or another third party controls the keys on the user's behalf.
Trading Terminal
A trading terminal is an all-in-one interface that helps crypto traders discover, analyse, buy, sell, and monitor assets from one place. In on-chain trading, terminals often combine token discovery, charts, wallet data, order execution, portfolio tracking, and decentralised exchange routing. Some terminals are designed specifically for fast-moving markets such as newly launched tokens or meme coins.
Oracle
A blockchain oracle is a system that provides smart contracts with information from outside the blockchain, such as asset prices, interest rates, sports results, weather data, or other external information.
Synthetic Asset
A synthetic asset is a blockchain-based or derivatives-based instrument designed to track the price or economic performance of another asset without necessarily providing ownership of that underlying asset.
Wrapped Token
A wrapped token is a blockchain token designed to represent another asset, often on a network where the original asset does not natively exist.
Price Impact
Price impact is the change in market price caused directly by the size of a trade relative to available liquidity.
Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV)
Fully diluted valuation, or FDV, estimates a crypto asset’s total value if all tokens in its maximum or total supply were circulating at the current market price.
Token Emissions
Token emissions refer to new tokens entering circulation over time through rewards, vesting, mining, staking, incentives, or scheduled issuance.
Token Burn
A token burn is the permanent removal of cryptocurrency tokens from circulation or future supply.
Long Squeeze
A long squeeze occurs when falling prices force leveraged long traders to close positions, creating additional selling pressure.
Short Squeeze
A short squeeze occurs when rising prices force short sellers to close positions, creating additional buying pressure that pushes price higher.
Short Position
A short position is a trade designed to benefit when the price of an asset falls.
Long Position
A long position is a trade that benefits if the price of an asset rises.
Backwardation
Backwardation is a futures-market condition where futures contracts trade below the current spot price.
Contango
Contango is a market condition where futures contracts trade at a higher price than the current spot price.
Basis
Basis is the difference between the price of a futures contract and the current spot price of the underlying asset.
Index Price
An index price is a reference price calculated from the spot prices of an asset across one or more external exchanges.
Mark Price
The mark price is a reference price used by many crypto derivatives platforms to calculate unrealised PnL and determine whether leveraged positions should be liquidated. It may differ from the last traded price visible on the exchange.
Liquidation Heatmap
A liquidation heatmap is a visual tool that estimates price areas where large numbers of leveraged positions may be liquidated.
Whale Wallet
A whale wallet is a blockchain address that holds or controls a large amount of a particular cryptocurrency or token. There is no universal balance threshold for becoming a whale. The definition depends on the asset’s supply, liquidity, market capitalisation, and holder distribution.