Glossary

Punk

APY

The annual percentage yield (APY) is the real rate of return earned by the Saver taking into account the effect of compounding interest.

Bonus

When user terminates their contract before the end date, a 1% early termination fee will be charged. That termination fee will then be added to the community's proceeds. We call this 'The Bonus' which will be an additional source of income for long-term users.

Count

It means how frequently you will receive your Saver in total. And the minimum unit is 1 time.

Early Termination Fee

When a user in a forge terminates the contract before the end date, he/she is charged with 1% of penalty - the early termination fee. Those collected will be subordinate to the community's extra profit. Traditional finance has profited themselves with termination fees. However, Punk has a structure that distributes profit to the users. We call it 'The Bonus.'

The stipulation provides incentives for you to comply with the contract, while additional revenue is generated for the Punk community. Don't worry too much because it can be earned quickly with Punk Protocol.

Interval

It means how often you receive your Saver, and the minimum unit is 1d.

Inventory

The Inventory is the space where your Saver is stored. In the Inventory, you can check your Saver status, receive the payout, or terminate the Saver.

pLP Token

pLP token is an ERC-20 token you get in return for providing liquidity on Punk Protocol. You can think of it as a sort of receipt. In essence, the amount of pLP tokens you are given represents the value of the money you put into the Saver.

Pool

A smart contract containing shared amounts of assets provided by depositors. Pools are used either in Automated Market Makers (AMMs)for optimized trading purposes, lending aggregation, or in shared yield farming strategies among other possibilities.

Punk Protocol

Punk Protocol is the first decentralized automated annuity protocol with several yield generations on the Ethereum network.

Punk Token

The Punk token is used for governance in Punk Protocol. Punk holders can reflect their opinions by voting on Punk Protocol development decisions. They can also fund grants, partnerships, liquidity mining pools, and other proposals. Soon, Punk team will no longer be directly involved, and Punk token holders will make all governance decisions.

Radar

The Radar is where you can inspect the detailed data in the punk protocol. In Radar, users can view and decide which products to select before joining the pool.

ROI

Return on Investment (ROI) is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency or profitability of an investment or compare the efficiency of diverse investments. ROI tries to directly measure the amount of return on a particular investment, relative to the investment’s cost.

To calculate ROI, the benefit (or return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment. The result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio.

Saver

Saver is a decentralized annuity system operating without any human intervention. Yield is being automatically generated with the existing DeFi protocols like Uniswap, Curve, Balancer, Aave, Compound, and dydx.

By specifying certain key parameters (e.g., deposit amount, starting Date, interval, count of receipts, end date, etc.), users can manage their cash flows strategically.

Starting Date

The Starting Date means when the user receives the initial payout and can be set at least 24 hours after the first deposit.

TVL

TVL represents the amount of assets that are currently deposited in the Punk Protocol. It is the dollar value of all the assets locked into Punk Protocol and used to measure Punk user's deposits.

Protocol

Aave

Aave is a decentralized non-custodial liquidity market protocol where users can participate as depositors or borrowers.

Depositors provide liquidity to the market to earn a passive income, while borrowers are able to borrow in an overcollateralized (perpetually) or undercollateralized (one-block liquidity) fashion.

Balancer

Balancer is an automated portfolio manager, liquidity provider, and price sensor.

Balancer turns the concept of an index fund on its head: instead of paying fees to portfolio managers to rebalance your portfolio, you collect fees from traders, who rebalance your portfolio by following arbitrage opportunities.

Balancer uses a Constant Mean Market Maker (CMMM)that enables non-equal weights for pools (e.g., 80/20 vs. 50/50) and allows LPs to provide single-sided liquidity.

Compound

Compound is a system of openly accessible smart contracts built on Ethereum.

Compound focuses on allowing borrowers to take out loans and lenders to provide loans by locking their crypto assets into the protocol.

The interest rates paid and received by borrowers and lenders are determined by the supply and demand of each crypto asset. Interest rates are generated with every block mined. Loans can be paid back and locked assets can be withdrawn at any time.

Curve

Curve is an exchange liquidity pool on Ethereum, designed for extremely efficient stablecoin trading and low risk, supplemental fee income for liquidity providers, without an opportunity cost.

Curve allows users to trade between correlated cryptocurrencies with a bespoke low slippage, low fee algorithm. The liquidity pool is also supplied to a lending protocol where it generates additional income for liquidity providers.

dYdX

dYdX is a decentralized trading platform that currently supports margin trading, spot trading, lending, and borrowing. dYdX runs on smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain and allows users to trade with no intermediaries.

Punk

Punk Protocol provides a decentralized automated pension service utilizing optimal strategies for earning periodic cash flows.

Punk allows anyone on the planet can access a permissionless pension system and benefit from fully-automated investing, optimal investment strategies, compounding effect, saving gas costs, low fee.

Uniswap

Uniswap is a protocol for creating liquidity and trading ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum. It eliminates trusted intermediaries and unnecessary forms of rent extraction, allowing for fast, efficient trading.

Where it makes tradeoffs decentralization, censorship resistance, and security are prioritized. Uniswap is open-source software licensed under GPL.

DeFi

Aggregator

Decentralized aggregators like Balancer, 1inch Exchange, and Yearn Finance search for the best swap rates when buying tokens as well as the highest yields when farming.

Algorithm

A set of instructions following predetermined commands and rules. Automated computer algorithms can provide complex logic and functionality for an unlimited amount of applications. These can operate and execute logical decisions at near lightspeed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and thus have huge speed, efficiency, reliability, and availability advantages over manual methods.

In DeFi, groups of algorithms are programmed into Smart Contracts that are executed and deployed to provide data, logic, and decision paths for these. These algorithms decide upon any potential changes and then execute these rapid transactions and strategies based on the analysis of the received data and the programmed logic of the contract(s).

Alpha Code

Early-stage prototype computer code, programs, and algorithms meant to solve a problem, and/or provide new digital goods or services. Alpha software comes with the expectation that the code is at an early prototype stage and is meant for an early testing phase meant for very limited testing.

Alpha code or software may be missing all or parts of expected software functionality. Planned features and the security of the software may also be very limited or even non-existent in many aspects.

APY

Annual Percentage Yield, a time-based measurement of the Return On Investment (ROI) on an asset. For example, $100 invested at 2% APY would yield $102 after one year, if there is no compounding of any interest earned on that $100 through the year. Assuming a static APY rate, the Monthly ROI would be 0.16%, in this case.

Arbitrage

The trading of a coin or crypto derivative, where the price spread between two different markets or exchanges for the same asset or product is utilized to earn greater profits.

In DeFi, automated yield farming uses algorithmic arbitrage strategies to maximize returns for investors. These arbitrage strategies may include buying, selling, lending, and/or providing liquidity of one or more digital assets, often on the same day.

Audit

An audit is either an internal or independent comprehensive review of a concept, system, process, company, or product. A comprehensive audit includes a thoughtful and in-depth look at the structure, strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities of the thing or process being audited.

Audits may be either informal or formal audits and are meant to be a tool to find and analyze weaknesses, so that issues and problems discovered during an audit may be remediated, mitigated, or corrected.

AMM

An Automated Market Maker (AMM) is a decentralized asset trading pool that enables market participants to buy or sell cryptocurrencies. AMMs are non-custodial and permissionless in nature. Most AMMs utilize a constant product, constant mean, or constant sum market-making formula; however, the most common is a constant product market maker, most notably Uniswap.

ATH

All-Time High is the highest price a cryptocurrency asset, portfolio, or value has reached against another asset. ATHs can occur against BTC, ETH, and fiat pairs but tend to be recognized against USDT pairs on major exchanges like Coinbase and Binance.

Bear Market

A period marked by prevailing negative investor sentiment about an asset or class of assets. A bear market can last weeks, months, or years.

Beta Code

Computer code, programs, and algorithms on the later stage of development act their role as prototypes to solve problems and/or to provide digital goods or services. When codes are beta versions, its functionality, features, and security of software may still be limited. After multiple testing, codes build more functionality and stability.

On beta versions, the codebase, process, system, and/or network is usually open to a limited number of testers who signify test systems and provide feedback for improvements to the developer or development team.

Beta code development is one of the critical final phases before the potential public release of Version 1.0 software. Bugs that are minor or fatal are expected along with security vulnerabilities undiscovered by previous reviews, testing, or audits.

Bonding curve

Bonding curves are equations used to create a smooth cause and effect relationship between a cryptocurrency's price and circulating supply. Bonding curves are most often employed in the DeFi space during token launch and distribution — the more users buy the token, the higher the price goes for everyone. However, the opposite is also true.

Bull market

A period marked by prevailing positive investor sentiment about an asset or class of assets. A bull market can last weeks, months, or years, and can sometimes be marked by what economists call a Bubble, where there may be irrational overenthusiasm about an asset or class of assets, leading to explosive price growth followed by an explosive price crash.

CeFi

Centralized Finance. In terms of cryptocurrency, CeFi is represented by centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, businesses, or organizations with a physical address, and usually with some sort of corporate structure. These CeFi businesses must follow all applicable laws, rules, and regulations in each country, state, or region in which they operate.

CEX

A CEX is a Centralized Exchange, with a physical address and a corporate structure. Like other CeFi businesses, a CEX must follow all applicable laws, rules, money transmitter licenses, and regulations in each country, state, or region in which they operate. There are significant overhead costs in running a CEX including Corporate leaders, labor, rent and electricity, office supplies, significant legal expenses, and expensive money transmitter licenses to be able to operate in chosen countries, states, or regions.

Collateralization

The borrowing of a deposit asset or assets to seek further business activities such as Yield Farming. Collateralization can amplify gains or losses, and is thus, considered riskier than not borrowing funds.

Composability

The measure of the usability and ability of the product to be used as a building block (or "money lego") in the construction of other products or domains. A protocol that is simple, powerful, and that functions well with other protocols would be considered to have high composability.

Compound Interest

Once called the eighth wonder of the world by Einstein, compound interest allows greater interest rates and returns on investments by allowing interest gained to be automatically reinvested back in with the original deposits and accrued interest. This reinvestment period is based on the planned distribution of this interest which may be hourly, weekly, monthly, or an annual interest distribution.

With compound interest, the greatest gains are often seen over a certain period in time, with a notably sharp rise in the value of investments seen at longer periods. In general, the longer a deposit benefits from compound interest, the much greater the overall gains when compared to gains made from simple interest.

Contract address

Decentralized exchanges like Uniswap are managed by liquidity providers rather than centralized hosts (order books). This allows anyone to create and deposit tokens to make them available for trading. In turn, scammers often create imitation tokens that resemble more popular assets. To verify that you are trading a real token (and not a fake), always enter the contract address in etherscan.io to verify the token's legitimacy.

Cryptocurrency

A form of digital currency protected by encryption algorithms and represented as a digital coin or token. Cryptocurrency coins are programmed to systems and networks for:

• Minting

• Release

• Reward

• Distribution

• Governance

• Ability to make future changes

These digital coins or tokens include a ledger or blockchain record of all transactions that occur on their respective networks.

Crypto Twitter

A loose term for the crypto community present on Twitter that is made up of developers, influencers, investors, and traders.

cTokens

Refers to Compound tokens. Depositing tokens into the Compound Finance app mints their Compound equivalent (e.g., USDT -> cUSDT).

DAO

Distributed Autonomous Organization. The first DAO was started in 2016. According to Wikipedia's definition, it is an:

Organization represented by rules encoded as a computer program that is transparent, controlled by the organization members, and not influenced by a central government. A DAO's financial transaction record and program rules are maintained on a blockchain.

When implemented well, a DAO allows for real-world experiments in decentralized democratic organization and control, with more freedom of action and less regulatory oversight for DAO controlled projects and products when compared to legacy corporate structures and organizations.

dApp

Decentralized Application. An open-source, software application with backend code running on a decentralized peer-to-peer network rather than a centralized server.

dApp is a decentralized Web3 application that normally runs on a blockchain. Advantages of dApps are that: they allow for new solutions to problems, they are decentralized and are thus rugged, and they are resistant to outages and censorship.

dApps can provide decentralized software application services - such as the Brave browser - but it can also be used to trace and track goods, and can be used to enable international financial transactions without the delay, costs, and hassle of middlemen and bureaucracy.

They can also be a keystone to the functionality of complex decentralized exchanges and crypto financial services such as price oracles.

Decentralized Oracle

Decentralized oracles provide both on and off-chain price data to blockchains / DeFi protocols.

DeFi

Decentralized Finance is at its root a set of Smart Contracts running independently on blockchains such as the Ethereum network. Smart Contracts may or may not interact with other smart contracts and even other blockchains.

The goal of DeFi is to enhance the profitability of investors in DeFi through automated smart contracts seeking to maximize yields for invested funds. DeFi is marked by rapid innovative progression and testing of new ideas and concepts.

DeFi often involves high-risk investing sometimes involving smart contracts that have not been audited or even thoroughly reviewed (a review is not as comprehensive as an audit, but may also be included as part of an audit). Due to this and other reasons, DeFi is conventionally considered to be riskier than CeFi or traditional investing.

Delegation

The concept of permitting a person, company, or organization the ability to borrow utilizing another owner's deposited collateral.

Delegated Fund DAO

A Decentralized Autonomous Organization with access to Delegated Funds in the form of Liquidity Pool and governance tokens under delegated control. As of 2020, it is a new concept and seed investment strategy introduced by YFI Developer Andre Cronje that supports the development of Fair Launch coins, tokens, projects, and products that provide new ideas and concepts that support DeFi without taking any allocation of the coin, token, or share of ownership of the new project that applicants intend to be launched. It is meant to incentivize innovation from new or previous crypto builders and designers while being an experiment in providing a new avenue of procuring seed capital for DeFi builders and designers.

Derivative

In investing, a derivative is an investment instrument or tool that is based on an underlying asset or assets. Investopedia describes it thus:

Derivatives can be used to hedge a position, speculate on the directional movement of an underlying asset, or give leverage to holdings. Their value comes from the fluctuations of the values of the underlying asset. Originally, derivatives were used to ensure balanced exchange rates for goods traded internationally.

DEX

Decentralized EXchange. A cryptocurrency exchange that is decentralized, without a physical location. It is a Peer-2-Peer network operating on Smart Contracts where users buy and sell directly to one another, with only the DEX as a middleman. Without the high overhead and regulatory costs of doing business as a CEX, a DEX does not have to follow the stricter rules and regulations that CEXs must follow, and thus can be leaner, more profitable, and more efficient than a CEX. (For example: How does one sue or arrest an automated Smart Contract which is running on a Virtual Machine that is globally distributed? [Comment: TMI?])

Ethereum

Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency but Ethereum, which launched in July 2015, allows for much more complexity through the use of smart contracts and a Turing complete programming language.

Thanks to the ERC-20 protocol, Ethereum has many cryptocurrency coins such as LINK, CRV and YFI built on top of Ethereum, each with their own set of rules.

Fair Launch

A concept where a Developer decides to not seek outside investment and also does not hold back a share of a coin or token's launch for themselves or others. This is considered to be much fairer to early investors as their share of equity or ownership of a coin or token is not diluted by pre-investors or founders/founding teams.

Fair Launch Coin or Token

A Fair Launch coin or token is characterized by a launch that is fair to the public. This means that there was no Founder, Foundation or Development Team, Venture Capitalist, or early investor pre-allocation or pre-mining program to privately claim a portion of a coin's supply before its release for sale to the public. The first Fair Launch token was YFI, which was launched in 2020 by Developer Andre Cronje.

Fiat

Fiat money is a government-issued currency that is not backed by a physical commodity, such as gold or silver, but rather by the government that issued it.

It usually requires fiat exchanged at a CEX or through local means such as Bitcoin ATMs to be able to purchase cryptocurrency with fiat currency.

Financial Primitive

A cryptocurrency-based financial generic building block. Financial Primitives are designed to efficiently and reliably perform one task. Financial Primitives may be combined to create smart contracts. These smart contracts may even be stacked upon one another to implement financial trading strategies.

Flash Loan

A type of loan that is only possible in the world of cryptocurrencies. A Flash Loan is a type of loan where the asset, often Ethereum or an ERC-20 coin, is loaned out only for the duration of the length of time it takes to complete one transaction block on the blockchain. As long as the loan is paid back before the next transaction block begins there is no interest fee incurred by the borrower.

Flash Loans allow for new types of investments that are nearly instantaneous algorithmic scripts to run in Smart Contracts that can be stacked upon one another for innovative yet sometimes risky investments. Flash Loans may also have vulnerabilities that may include systems vulnerabilities that take advantage of approved existing systems but are used in a novel malicious manner.

FOMO

Fear Of Missing Out. The feeling that everyone else seems to be getting rich, profiting, or generally having a great time without you. In investing, it's a feeling that your current portfolio isn't performing well enough when compared to newer and "shinier" investment choices and options.

Forced Liquidation

In the context of cryptocurrencies, forced liquidation happens when the investor or trader is unable to fulfill the margin requirements for a leveraged position. The concept of liquidation applies to both futures and margin trading.

Game theory

An emerging field in the mathematics world is dedicated to the study of game theory, or the way competitors interact and create outcomes using strategies. In DeFi, game theory is especially relevant as market participants each try to capture value to their benefit.

Gas Fees

Gas fees are rewards paid to Proof Of Work miners to incentivize them to support the network's transactions which become written to the blockchain.

In Ethereum, this gas fee unit amount is expressed in gwei. Withdrawals or transfers to or from CEXs, DEXs Liquidity Pools, and Wallets all incur a gas fee. The amount of this gas fee will vary in cost depending on supply and demand. As currently designed: when demand on Ethereum or an ERC-20 network is at its highest, gas fees are at also their highest.

Governance

Governance refers to the control and use of a Governance coin, token, and/or project through various measures to grow the ecosystem or product and to maximize gains for governance token holders.

Governance Token

A token is used to govern the operations and influence the direction of a coin, token, and/or project controlled by the Governance Token. Holding these tokens are often profitable through direct price appreciation of popular governance tokens, but may come with other benefits that are only available to governance token holders and voters. Examples of governance tokens are MKR and YFI.

Gwei

A unit of measurement of gas fees for transactions on the Ethereum network or ERC-20 coin networks.

Hack

The application of the use of knowledge of one or more vulnerabilities in a system, language, operating system, software, firmware, and/or hardware to take advantage of vulnerabilities in simple or complex systems or processes to perform usually nefarious activities against the target of the hack.

Hacks may even be combined with sophisticated social engineering and phishing attempts of various methods in order to pull off a breach and hack.

HODL

A misspelled word by a crypto investor on an online forum from the early days of cryptocurrency, HODL became a term that was embraced as an inside joke by the nascent community of investors, coders, and entrepreneurs who supported coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum in the early days. They believe in the long-term promise of cryptocurrencies and held their investments through periods of massive volatility or even no volatility (i.e., price stagnation).

The choice or decision to hold onto one's crypto investments through bull and bear markets is called HODLing.

HODLer

One who HODLs.

Impermanent Loss

In Automated Market Makers (AMM) lending providers (LPs) contribute assets for liquidity to market participants. These AMM pools utilize a bonding curve, typically built on a constant function market marker formula. Asset prices are constantly changed by the AMM pool in response to trading activities by participants. This is an effort to ensure that LPs can receive the same amount of assets they deposited when they withdrawal.

However, due to the volatility of asset prices and arbitragers, LPs occasionally will not receive the exact amount of assets upon withdrawal. The dollar value of the assets they withdraw would typically be lower than if they had no provided liquidity and just held the assets. This dollar value shortfall is known as impermanent loss. The loss is said to be impermanent because if asset prices return to the level during withdrawal the loss is eliminated.

Institutional Investor

A large organization, such as a bank, pension fund, labor union, or insurance company, that makes substantial investments on the stock exchange.

In CeFi & DeFi, traditional institutional investors have an easier on-ramp into cryptocurrency should they seek higher yields albeit at higher risks.

We have also seen a rise of a new type of a virtual mutual fund, a decentralized cryptocurrency funded mutual fund controlled by governance tokens and Smart Contracts called a Cryptocurrency Institutional Investor.

Unlike traditional mutual funds most of these CIIs are decentralized virtual institutes, usually governed and operating as a DAO - dedicated to using pooled funds and assets efficiently. CIIs wield available funds, tools, products, assets, votes via governance tokens, and Smart Contracts tactically and strategically to maximize investor's gains.

Interest

In DeFi, the interest gained from offering cryptocurrency loans either individually or as a pooled venture is expressed in an interest rate of return over a certain time period. The output of this deposit or investment is known as the interest or interest gain.

From a borrower’s perspective, interest would also be the interest debt on a loan or delinquent flash loan.

Lending Aggregator

A program or set of smart contracts that automatically seeks the best lending rates for depositors loaning coins for returns on their investment or ROI.

Lending Provider

A Lending Provider is a person or group that provides cryptocurrency capital in exchange for a share of rewards and fees gained by lending out and providing liquidity for various cryptocurrency coins and their respective networks. Loans are provided to traders, investors, exchanges, cryptocurrency networks, DAOs, and CIIs to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities and business opportunities by actors within the CeFi and DeFi space.

Leverage

The use of multipliers on exchanges or markets that allow leveraged trading, such that providing 1 BTC deposit on such an exchange could provide the investment power of 10 to 100 BTC if used at 10x to 100x leverage.

Leveraged trades can amplify gains greatly. However, should the trade be unprofitable, it can also amplify losses greatly. The downside of this risky approach is that the entire deposit, 1 BTC in this example, could be lost in a liquidation event where a margin call on this leveraged trade could result in the entire deposit being lost during times of massive volatility and insufficient reserve funds for the investor, trader, or CII.

Liquidation Event

Another term for a Forced Liquidation, where due to rapid market changes, or a change in prevailing market sentiment, a trader or investor is unable to meet a margin call on their leveraged investment, their trading position is eliminated or liquidated, and the investor loses all or part of their initial investment(s).

Liquidity

The availability of liquid assets to a company or market. An asset is considered more liquid if it can easily be converted into cash. The harder the ability to turn an asset into cash the more illiquid the asset. For example, stocks are considered relatively liquid assets as they can be easily converted to cash while real estate is considered an illiquid asset. The liquidity of an asset affects its risk potential and market price.

Liquidity Mining

An energy-efficient form of cryptocurrency mining that supports work and transactions on a blockchain usually without expensive application or hardware-specific equipment required by older forms of cryptocurrency mining.

Rewards are provided to liquidity providers as a means to incentivize liquidity mining providers, in addition to growing and supporting a blockchain's user base.

Liquidity Pool

An LP, or Liquidity Pool, is a pool of deposited funds meant to provide liquidity to a currency, network, or Smart Contract. Liquidity is considered the lifeblood of any physical or digital currency, exchange, or financial network, so there will be designed rewards or incentives given to those who provide liquidity to LPs.

Liquidity Providers

In the realm of cryptocurrency and DeFi, this refers to investors who deposit an asset to provide liquidity on an exchange and/or network(s) to gain an ROI on their investment. Investors deposit one or more of their digital assets into decentralized Liquidity Pools (LPs) to provide liquid capital to exchanges and smart contracts. Liquidity Providers often provide two or more types of assets, in which Impermanent Loss is sometimes seen.

LP token

When a liquidity provider deposits tokens into a liquidity pool, their stake is represented by a minted LP token. The LP token represents the staked asset(s) and can yield farm other DeFi platforms or exchanged back for the original assets.

Maker

Maker is a decentralized governed financial ecosystem based on a Stablecoin called DAI. DAI is algorithmically pegged to $1 USD, with no volatility. A digital asset with no volatility at all, is sometimes seen as a hedge or safety measure in times of high volatility or during Bear markets.

MakerDAO CDP

The MakerDAO Collateralized Debt Position (CDP) is a smart contract that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. It is a core component of the Sai Stablecoin System whose purpose is to create Sai in exchange for collateral which it then holds in escrow until the borrowed Sai is returned.

Margin

An available avenue of borrowed capital that is considered very high risk, as collateral must be provided for a margin loan to secure the loan. It is called a margin or a margin loan because a risky loan is being taken on the margins of the investment to hopefully amplify gains for the investor or trader.

A margin loan is considered very high risk as the deposited base asset is at risk of liquidation during a margin call.

Margin Call

The act of implementing a Forced Liquidation or Liquidation Event when an investor or trader cannot meet debt obligations on leveraged trade positions. Margin calls can be triggered by rapidly changing market conditions and high volatility that bring Liquidation Events for some leveraged traders on exchanges and markets.

Market Cap

Market Capitalization. A measure of the total funds invested in a company or project. This market cap of a coin, company, or project can be calculated by multiplying the asset's unit price by the total number of coins.

MetaMask

MetaMask is a popular mobile or desktop software cryptocurrency wallet that can hold, transmit or receive Ethereum and ERC-20 compatible coins or tokens.

Mining Pool

A pool of cryptocurrency miners that provides mining services to a cryptocurrency network. Mining Pool operators and contributors are incentivized by a coin or token's programmed mining rewards to support transactions and provide liquidity on a coin's network.

Multisig Wallet

A multiple signature wallet is a cryptocurrency wallet that controls access and changes to one or more Smart Contracts. Community governed projects like a DAO often require multiple signers to approve a transaction before it will be executed. For community-based efforts, Multisig wallets for DAOs and DeFi projects are often implemented as 6 of 9 wallets, where 6 of 9 community wallet signers must agree to sign a transaction before a Smart Contract can be implemented.

Oracle

A feed of data, such as the current market prices of an asset or assets, that provides a high confidence service to users and other services that the source and detail of the oracle's data are timely, accurate, and untampered. Sources of data may be singular or decentralized sources and may be dispersed geographically from one another. All exchanges and markets require accurate and timely information to operate properly at high efficiency. An example of the most well-known oracle protocol is Chainlink (LINK).

Protocol

A set of rules that dictate how data is exchanged and transmitted. These rules detail definitions, standards, limitations, and potential stipulations of a protocol. Examples of technology protocols include TCP/IP and ERC-20.

Rebalance

To make changes to a portfolio or pool of funds for various reasons. An automated or manual tactical change to a yield farming strategy that is meant to nearly instantaneously do one or more of the following actions:

• Gain profits through arbitrage

• Take or secure profits

• Reduce risks to investors or pooled funds

During periods of high volatility, the latter is especially the case if margin or leveraged funding is used by the trader, investor, or controller in charge of pooled funds. If an assessment is made that market conditions are a risk to invested funds, mitigation efforts will be implemented either autonomously or through manual intervention to reduce risks to invested funds.

Retail Investor

A non-professional individual investor who buys, sells, lends, and/or yields farms cryptocurrencies, crypto derivatives, and crypto offerings. Retail investors pay full retail price for their transactions, instead of benefitting volume discounts and other preferential treatment reserved for whales and CIIs.

ROI

Return On Investment. The gains or losses on an investment. For example, doubling your investment in an asset would be a 100% gain, or 100% ROI. Losing all of your investment would be a 100% loss, or -100% ROI.

Slippage

In trade, there is almost always a spread between the price that a buyer will pay and the price that a seller will sell an asset. When an order is made, this difference in price between buyer and seller expectations results in price slippage. This slippage in price is usually 1-3% but can be even more for coins with limited liquidity. This slippage can lead to a final sale price of the asset that is either more or less than the requested transaction amount.

Smart Contract

A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol that is intended to automatically execute, control or document legally relevant events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement.

The objectives of smart contracts are the reduction of need in trusted intermediates, arbitrations and enforcement costs, fraud losses, as well as the reduction of malicious and accidental exceptions.

Spread

When an order is made on an exchange or market, the disagreement of the difference in price between potential buy and sell offers of an asset is called the spread. A wide spread in price can lead to higher slippage.

Stablecoin

In cryptocurrency, it is a digital cryptocurrency equivalent to one (1) Dollar USD. In theory, the price of the stable coin is pegged to the US Dollar, but in practice, there is some variance to nearly all stablecoins except for coins like DAI, which are designed with no volatility.

A stablecoin is an attractive investment to investors because:

• It can be used as a safe harbor or hedge for cryptocurrency funds in times of downward volatility, also known as a bear market, whether this trend in downward volatility is temporary or prolonged in duration.

• It can be used as diversification into the realm of Cryptocurrency finance to take advantage of new products in CeFi and DeFi that are unavailable elsewhere, as a safe diversification into crypto that won't lose nor gain significant value to the stablecoin price.

• A coin with a stable price is used for transferring crypto around, as a means to not lose value in the base asset itself as its being moved around or deployed to Smart Contracts or wallets.

Staking

The act of depositing a cryptocurrency coin or token into a yield farming project and/or protocol, whether the access to the project is either through CeFi or DeFi methods.

Stakers hope to gain interest in their deposits into these yield farming projects and offerings. CeFi is considered safer for several reasons - including strict rules, permitting, and regulations. However, DeFi tends to give many high rewards, while being accompanied with much higher risks, the earlier the investor participates in the project's lifecycle, testing, and development.

Synthetics (synths)

Synthetics are blockchain-based derivative trading products representative of other assets. Synthetics, or synths, are often backed directly by the underlying asset, but this is not always necessary. Some synths are built by a basket of assets made to resemble and track the original asset. As an example, think of trading a plastic banana in place of a real banana.

Testnet

A testing network for a new coin, project, or product, or for potential improvements to an existing product or offering. Testnets are used to test the viability and vulnerability of new ideas, concepts, code, and processes prior to moving on to a production network or networks of some sort.

Token

A type of coin, except with much greater functionality. Tokens can also be used as a method of payment like coins, but unlike coins, they can excel at other use cases such as the democratic governance of a protocol or system, or as a means to use underlying coins to make liquidity tokens from these coin deposits.

These liquidity tokens could then be used in innovative new strategies elsewhere via delegated funds to amplify gains with little risk to the underlying asset the liquidity token is based upon. An investor could choose this action so that further gains to their assets may be made by using the automated actions of intelligent Smart Contracts to optimize gains.

Tokenomics

Short for token economics, tokenomics refers to the token design and includes factors such as circulating/max token supply, token emission rates, and vesting schedules.

TradFi

Refers to traditional finance or centralized finance institutions like banks and other legacy institutions. Sometimes used as a derogatory term on Crypto Twitter.

Underlying assets

Financial derivatives such as perpetual, synthetics, and LP tokens (aLINK, wBTC, cUSDT) all derive their value from underlying assets (the original assets they track or represent).

Volatility

In investing, a measure of how rapid changes are seen to the price of an asset or market. Newer early-stage technology companies and projects in the explosive growth stage tend to see very high volatility in the price of their assets in their early days. Should the company or project behind the volatile asset see their venture survive over time, this volatility tends to be much reduced as the company's market cap grows and matures.

Wallet

A software or hardware cryptocurrency wallet that can hold a variety of coins.

Wallets may also be considered a cold wallet - meant to be used for long term storage of crypto coins for security purposes or a hot wallet, which is considered more at risk than a cold wallet due to its inaccessibility (usually offline).

Whale

A person who HODLs a large amount of cryptocurrency or cryptocurrencies.

Yield Farming

Yield farming is the act of depositing, or staking, tokens, across DeFi platforms offering rewards for liquidity providers. Farming your tokens enables you to generate additional value from your assets by having them work for you.

Zapper

Zapper.fi is a DeFi tool that allows users to simplify their entry and exit into DeFi products and offerings by batching or "zapping" transactions in a batch. It is designed to simplify and speed up this process. In some cases, this method of the transaction can reduce gas fees for investors.

This tool is also used to provide granular insight and tracking of a user's DeFi investments and assets. Zapper. fi is natively supported by many DeFi protocols and products.

Blockchain

Address (Wallet Address)

Used to send and receive transactions on a blockchain network. An address is an alphanumeric character string, which can also be represented as a scannable QR code.

Airdrop

A token distribution method used to send cryptocurrency or tokens to wallet addresses. Sometimes airdrops are used for marketing purposes in exchange for simple tasks like reshares, referrals, or app downloads.

Air-gapping

A method for securing computers in which the device does not connect to the internet or any other open networks.

Altcoin

Any digital currency alternative to Bitcoin. Many altcoins are forks [see below for definition] of Bitcoin with minor changes (e.g., Litecoin).

AML

Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations are aimed at preventing criminal enterprise within the cryptocurrency landscape. In practice, AML regulations are what require crypto exchanges to gather your identity documents for verification measures.

API

Application Programming Interface. A software intermediary that allows two separate applications to communicate with one another. APIs define methods of communication between various components.

ASIC

Application Specific Integrated Circuit. ASICs are silicon chips designed to do a specific task. In ASIC use for mining cryptocurrencies, the ASIC will perform a calculation to find values that provide a desired solution when placed into a hashing algorithm.

Bitcoin (BTC)

The first cryptocurrency based on the Proof of Work blockchain. Bitcoin was created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakomoto — a pseudonym for an individual whose real identity is unknown — and the concept of cryptocurrency was outlined in a white paper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”

Blockchain

A consensus digital ledger comprised of unchangeable, digitally recorded data in packages called blocks. Each block is ‘chained’ to the next block using a cryptographic signature. This allows blockchains to act like a ledger, which can be shared with and accessed by anyone with the appropriate permissions.

Block Confirmation

A confirmation means that the network has verified the blockchain transaction. This happens through a process known as mining, in a Proof of Work system (e.g., Bitcoin). Once a transaction is successfully confirmed it theoretically cannot be reversed or double spent. The more confirmations a transaction has, the harder it becomes to perform a double spend attack.

Block Height

The number of blocks connected together in the blockchain. For example, Height 0 would be the very first block, which is also called the Genesis Block.

Block Reward

The reward is given to a miner after it has successfully hashed a transaction block. Block rewards can be a mixture of coins and transaction fees. The composition depends on the policy used by the cryptocurrency in question, and whether all of the coins have already been successfully mined. The current block reward for the Bitcoin network is 12.5 bitcoins per block.

Bounty

Bounties in cryptocurrency is a program through which incentivizes positive behavior and action towards the company product. In the case of cryptocurrency, it generally happens in the ICO phase.

So, for example, if a company releases a new program or service, they will introduce a new bounty program. The bounty program will have a proper explanation of what actions can earn you specific rewards. Both the activities and the rewards will be defined ahead of time. The bounty hunters (people who do bounties) exchange their time and effort for the rewards.

Client

Software that accesses a blockchain via a local computer and helps to process transactions. A client usually includes a cryptocurrency software wallet.

Coin

A form of digital currency primarily used for payments or storage of wealth. Coins are secured by encryption algorithms.

The market price of the coin represents the value of the ownership of a divisible unit of the coin or token (another name for a coin, but a type of coin with greater functionality) at a given moment in time. This coin or token can represent a share of the ownership and/or governance of a coin, token, protocol, company, or project and all of the benefits that this may entail.

Cold Wallet

A cryptocurrency wallet that cannot be compromised because it is not connected to the Internet. The cold wallet stores the user's address and private key and works in conjunction with compatible software in the computer. Contrast with Hot Wallet.

Consensus

The process used by a group consisting of peers that is responsible for maintaining distributed ledger use. The way to reach consensus on the use of the ledger’s contents.

Cryptocurrency

A form of digital currency protected by encryption algorithms and represented as a digital coin or token. Cryptocurrency coins are programmed to systems and networks for:

• Minting

• Release

• Reward

• Distribution

• Governance

• Ability to make future changes

These digital coins or tokens include a ledger or blockchain record of all transactions that occur on their respective networks.

Cryptography

A method for secure communication using code. Symmetric-key cryptography is used by various blockchain networks for the transfer of cryptocurrencies. Blockchain addresses generated for wallets are paired with private keys that allow transfer of cryptocurrency. Paired public and private keys allow funds to be unlocked.

dApp

Decentralized Application. An open source, software application with backend code running on a decentralized peer-to-peer network rather than a centralized server.

dApp is a decentralized Web3 application that normally runs on a blockchain. Advantages of dApps are that: they allow for new solutions to problems, they are decentralized and are thus rugged, and they are resistant to outages and censorship.

dApps can provide decentralized software application services - such as the Brave browser - but it can also be used to trace and track goods, and can be used to enable international financial transactions without the delay, costs, and hassle of middlemen and bureaucracy.

They can also be a keystone to the functionality of complex decentralized exchanges and crypto financial services such as price oracles.

DDoS Attack

Distributed Denial of Service Attack. A type of cyber-attack in which the perpetrator continuously overwhelms the system with requests in order to prevent the service of legitimate requests.

Decentralization

The transfer of authority and responsibility from a centralized organization, government, or party to a distributed network.

DeFi

Decentralized Finance is at its root a set of Smart Contracts running independently on blockchains such as the Ethereum network. Smart Contracts may or may not interact with other smart contracts and even other blockchains.

The goal of DeFi is to enhance the profitability of investors in DeFi through automated smart contracts seeking to maximize yields for invested funds. DeFi is marked by rapid innovative progression and testing of new ideas and concepts.

DeFi often involves high-risk investing sometimes involving smart contracts that have not been audited or even thoroughly reviewed (a review is not as comprehensive as an audit, but may also be included as part of an audit). Due to this and other reasons, DeFi is conventionally considered to be riskier than CeFi or traditional investing.

Digital Asset

A digital commodity that is scarce, electronically transferable, and intangible with a market value.

Digital Identity

An online or networked identity adopted by an individual, organization, or electronic device.

Digital Signature

A code generated by public-key encryption and attached to an electronically transmitted document in order to verify the contents of the document.

Distributed Ledger

A type of database that spreads across multiple sites, countries, or institutions. Records are stored sequentially in a continuous ledger. Distributed ledger data can be either “permissioned” or “unpermissioned” to control who can view it.

Difficulty

The concept outlining how hard it is to verify blocks in a blockchain network during Proof of Work mining. In the Bitcoin network, the difficulty of mining adjusts alters blocks every 2016 block. This is to keep block verification time at ten minutes.

Double Spend

The event during which someone in the Bitcoin network tries to send a specific bitcoin transaction to two different recipients at once. However, each bitcoin transaction is confirmed it becomes almost impossible to double spend it. The more confirmations that a particular transaction has, the decreased likelihood of double spending the bitcoin from the transaction.

EIP

Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) describe standards for the Ethereum platform, including core protocol specifications, client APIs, and contract standards.

Encryption

A process used to combine a document (plaintext) with a shorter string of data referred to as “a key” in order to produce an output (ciphertext). This output can be “decrypted” back into the original plaintext by someone else who has the key.

ERC20 Token Standard

ERC is the abbreviation for Ethereum Request for Comment and is followed by the assignment number of the standard. ERC20 is a technical standard for smart contracts the majority of Ethereum tokens follow. This list of rules states the requirements that a token must fulfill to be compliant and function within the Ethereum network.

ERC721 Token Standard

A non-fungible Ethereum token standard. This token standard is used to represent a unique digital asset that is not interchangeable.

Ether (ETH)

Ether is the native currency of the Ethereum blockchain network. Ether—also referred to as ETH—functions as a fuel of the Ethereum ecosystem by acting as a medium of incentive and form of payment for network participants to execute essential operations.

EVM

Ethereum Virtual Machine. The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is Turing complete and allows anyone, anywhere to execute arbitrary EVM Byte Code. All Ethereum nodes run on the EVM. The project is designed to prevent denial-of-service attacks. It is home to smart contracts based on the Ethereum blockchain.

Exchange

A place to trade cryptocurrency. Centralized exchanges, operated by companies like Coinbase and Gemini, function as intermediaries, while decentralized exchanges do not have a central authority.

Fiat Currency

Government-issued currency. For example: US Dollars (USD), Euros (EUR), Yuan (CNY), and Yen (JPY)

Fork

A fork creates an alternative version of a blockchain and is often enacted intentionally to apply upgrades to a network. Soft Forks render two chains with some compatibility, while Hard Forks create a new version of the chain that must be adopted to continue participation. In the instance of a contentious Hard Fork, this can create two versions of a blockchain network.

Genesis Block

The initial block of data computed in the history of a blockchain network.

Hash

A function that takes an input, and then outputs an alphanumeric string known as the “hash value” or “digital fingerprint.” Each block in the blockchain contains the hash value that validated the transaction before it followed by its own hash value. Hashes confirm transactions on the blockchain.

Halving

Many cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, have a finite supply, which makes them a scarce digital commodity. The total amount of Bitcoin that will ever be issued is 21 million. The number of bitcoins generated per block is decreased 50% every four years. This is called “halving.” The final halving will take place in the year 2140.

Hard Fork

A hard fork occurs when there is a change in the blockchain that is not backward compatible (not compatible with older versions), thus requiring all participants to upgrade to the new version in order to be able to continue participating on the network.

Hardware Wallet

A physical device—like the famed Ledger Wallet—that can be connected to the web and interact with online exchanges, but can also be used as cold storage (not connected to the internet).

Hot Wallet

A cryptocurrency wallet can be compromised because it is connected to the Internet, either via the user's computer, which is typically online or by using a cloud-based wallet service.

Hot wallets are considered to have lower security than cold storage systems or hardware wallets. Contrast with a cold wallet.

Hybrid Consensus Model

A hybrid consensus model that utilizes a combination of Proof of Stake (PoS) and Proof of Work (PoW) consensus. Using this Hybrid consensus mechanism, blocks are validated from not only miners but also voters (stakeholders) to form balanced network governance.

Immutability

The inability to be altered or changed over time. A key element of blockchain networks, once written onto a blockchain ledger, data cannot be altered. This immutability provides the basis for commerce and trade to take place on blockchain networks.

ICO

An Initial Coin Offering occurs when a new cryptocurrency sells advance tokens in exchange for upfront capital.

IPFS

InterPlanetary File System. Decentralized file storage and referencing system for the Ethereum blockchain. IFPS is an open-source protocol that enables storing and sharing hypermedia (text, audio, visual) in a distributed manner without relying on a single point of failure. This distributed file system enables applications to run faster, safer, and more transparently.

KYC

Know Your Customer (KYC) is a basic verification check required by centralized finance exchanges, CeFi platforms (such as Celsius), and others. DeFi platforms typically reject KYC measures as they are decentralized protocols.

A process in which a business must verify the identity and background information (address, financials, etc) of their customers. For example, current regulations and laws require banks and other financial institutions to keep and report customers’ personal information and transactions.

Liquid Democracy (Delegative Democracy)

A government system where votes can be delegated or proxied to other individuals such as friends, politicians, or subject matter experts. For example, in liquid democracy, Bob could give Alice his vote and Alice would then vote for both herself and Bob.

A liquid democracy has been explored as a governance mechanism for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations where every participant is able to vote or delegate their vote to another individual.

Mainnet

The primary network where actual transactions take place on a specific distributed ledger. For example, The Ethereum mainnet is the public blockchain where network validation and transactions take place.

Merkle Tree

Similar to the concept of a family tree, where a parent branch splits into children branches, which then extrapolated into grandchildren branches. A merkle tree is a data structure in which a single hash code function(cryptographic code) splits into smaller branches. In the diagram Hash becomes “Hash 0” and “Hash 1,” which then splits again and is represented on the blockchain. This type of data structure enables faster verification on a blockchain network.

Mining

The process by which “blocks” or transactions are verified and added to a blockchain. In order to verify a block, a miner must use a computer to solve a cryptographic problem. Once the computer has solved the problem, the block is considered “mined” or verified. In the Bitcoin or Ethereum blockchain, the first computer to mine or verify the block receives bitcoin or ether, respectively.

Multi Signature (MultiSig)

A crypto-asset wallet that requires multiple keys to access. Typically, a specified number of individuals are required to approve or “sign” a transaction before they are able to access the wallet. This is different from most wallets which only require one signature to approve a transaction.

Node (Full Node)

Any computer connected to the blockchain network is referred to as a node. A full node is a computer that can fully validate transactions and download the entire data of a specific blockchain. In contrast, a “lightweight” or “light” node does not download all pieces of a blockchain’s data and uses a different validation process.

NFT

Non-Fungible Token. Fungibility refers to an object’s ability to be exchanged for another. For example, an individual dollar is considered fungible as we can trade dollars with one another. Artwork is usually deemed non-fungible as paintings, sculptures, or masterpieces are likely to be unequal in quality or value. A non-fungible token is a type of token that is a unique digital asset and has no equal token. This is in contrast to cryptocurrencies like ether that are fungible in nature.

P2P

Peer-to-peer (P2P) refers to interactions that happen between two parties, usually two separate individuals. A P2P network can be any number of individuals. In regards to a blockchain network, individuals are able to transact or interact with each other without relying on an intermediary or single point of failure.

Permissioned Ledger

A blockchain network in which access to a ledger or network requires permission from an individual or group of individuals. Permissioned ledgers may have one or many owners. Consensus on a permissioned ledger is conducted by the trusted actors, such as government departments, banks, or other known entities. Permissioned blockchains or ledgers contain highly verifiable data sets because the consensus process creates a digital signature, which can be seen by all parties. A permissioned ledger is much easier to maintain and considerably faster than a public blockchain. For example, Quorum or Hyperledger Besu is permissioned ledgers that can be more easily set up for large enterprises. In contrast, the public Ethereum blockchain is a permissionless ledger that anyone can access.

Private Blockchain

A blockchain or distributed ledger that has a closed network where participants are controlled by a single entity. A private blockchain requires a verification process for new participants. A private blockchain may also limit which individuals are able to participate in the consensus of the blockchain network.

Private Currency

A currency or token issued by a private individual or firm. Typically, the token or currency is limited to use within the network of that particular firm or individual. This is not to be confused with a “privacy cryptocurrency” which is a cryptocurrency with specific privacy features, such as hidden user identities.

Private Key

A private key is an alphanumeric string of data that corresponds to a single specific wallet or “public address”. Private keys can be thought of as a password that enables an individual to access their crypto wallet/account. Never reveal your private key to anyone, as whoever controls the private key controls the account funds. If you lose your private key, then you lose access to your wallet.

Proof of Authority

A consensus mechanism used in private blockchains grants a single private key the authority to generate all of the blocks or validate transactions.

PoS

Proof of Stake. An alternative consensus protocol, in which an individual or “validator” uses their own cryptocurrency to validate transactions or blocks. Validators “stake” their cryptocurrency, such as ether, on whichever transactions they choose to validate. If the individual validates a block (group of transactions) correctly then the individual receives a reward. Typically, if a validator verifies an incorrect transaction then they lose the cryptocurrency that they staked. Proof of Stake requires a negligible amount of computing power compared to Proof of Work consensus (see also Hybrid ConsenSys Model).

PoW

Proof of Work. A protocol for establishing consensus across a system that ties mining capability to computational power. Hashing a block, which is in itself an easy computational process, now requires each miner to solve for a set, difficult variable. In effect, the process of hashing each block becomes a competition. This addition of solving for a target increases the difficulty of successfully hashing each block. For each hashed block, the overall process of hashing will have taken some time and computational effort. Thus, a hashed block is considered Proof of Work (see also Hybrid ConsenSys Model).

Public Blockchain

A globally open network where anyone can participate in transactions, execute consensus protocol to help determine which blocks get added to the chain, and maintain the shared ledger.

Public Key

Obtained and used by anyone to encrypt messages before they are sent to a known recipient with a matching private key for decryption. By pairing a public key with a private key, transactions not dependent on trusting involved parties or intermediaries are possible. The public key encrypts a message into an unreadable format and the corresponding private key makes it readable again for the intended party.

Relayer

Any party or entity which hosts an off-chain order book. Relayers help traders discover counter-parties and cryptographically move orders between them. 0x is an example of a popular Ethereum relayer protocol.

Satoshi Nakamoto

A pseudonymous individual or entity who created the Bitcoin protocol, solving the digital currency issue of the “double spend.” Nakamoto first published their white paper describing the project in 2008 and the first Bitcoin software was released one year later.

Scalability

A change in size or scale to handle the network’s demands. This word is used to refer to a blockchain project’s ability to handle network traffic, future growth, and capacity in its intended application.

Shard

Sharding refers to splitting the entire network into multiple portions called “shards.” Each shard would contain its own independent state, meaning a unique set of account balances and smart contracts. Usually, shards must be tightly coupled and side-chains must be loosely coupled.

Slashing Condition

A condition that causes the validator’s deposit to be destroyed when they trigger it.

Self-executing

Functioning by itself, not controlled by any other party other than itself. Self-executing smart contracts cut costs/overhead by removing the need for an arbitrator and trust toward a third party.

Soft Fork

A change to the software protocol where only previously valid blocks/transactions are made invalid. Since old nodes will recognize the new blocks as valid, a soft fork is backward-compatible. However, this can result in a potential divide in the blockchain, as the old software generates blocks that read as invalid according to the new rules.

Solidity

The programming language developers use to write smart contracts on the Ethereum network.

State

The set of data that a blockchain network strictly needs to keep track of, and that represents data currently relevant to applications on the chain.

Transaction Block

A collection of transactions on a blockchain network gathered into a set or a block that can then be hashed and added to the blockchain.

Transaction Fee

A small fee imposed on some transactions sent across a blockchain network. The transaction fee is awarded to the miner that successfully hashes the block containing the relevant transaction.

Turing Complete

In programming, it refers to a language that is powerful and semi-autonomous, in a way. When a language such as a Solidity or Vyper is Turing complete, it means that with enough processing power and time, a properly programmed Smart Contract using a Turing complete language should be able to use its code base and logical algorithms to perform nearly any digital task or process.

A Turing complete language can even be programmed to have impacts on real-world activities through electronic means, as these rapidly executed digital commands can trigger actions in the real world through sensors, relays, switches, cameras, alarms, and alerts that can trigger a human and/or automatic response.

The concept of a Turing complete programming language was named after the inventor of the idea, Alan Turing. He was an unsung war hero and legendary mathematician. Turing was also a renowned and brilliant computer scientist, cryptanalyst, and forward thinker.

Validator

A participant in Proof of Stake consensus. Validators need to submit a security deposit in order to get included in the validator set.

zk-SNARK

zk-SNARK is an acronym for the zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge, a cryptographic proof system that enables a user to verify a transaction without revealing the actual data of the transaction, and without interacting with the user who published the transaction.

51% Attack

If more than half the computer power or mining hash rate on a network is run by a single person or a single group of people, then a 51% attack is in operation. This means that this entity has full control of the network and can negatively affect a cryptocurrency by taking over mining operations, stopping or changing transactions, and double-spending coins.