Mempool
The pool of pending, unconfirmed transactions waiting to be included in a block. Mempool size and fee distribution are key metrics for transaction prioritization…
Glossary
Glossary — crypto terms, defined
80 articles · refreshed Jun 10, 2026
Market cap
Market capitalization — circulating supply multiplied by current price. For Bitcoin: 19.7M circulating × $73k ≈ $1.46T market cap. Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) uses…
Mainnet
A blockchain's production network, where real value is transferred. Contrasts with testnet — a public test network with worthless test tokens. New protocols typically…
Liquidation
Forced sale of a borrower's collateral when its value falls below a protocol's required loan-to-value ratio. Common in DeFi lending (Aave, Compound) and leveraged…
Liquidity
The ease with which an asset can be bought or sold without affecting its price. High liquidity means tight bid-ask spreads, low slippage, and…
Layer 2
A network built on top of a Layer 1 that processes transactions off-chain and posts proofs or summaries back to the L1. Optimistic rollups…
Layer 1
A base blockchain — Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche. L1s settle transactions themselves rather than relying on another chain. L1 design involves trade-offs between decentralization,…
Impermanent loss
The loss a liquidity provider in an AMM pool experiences when the two pool tokens diverge in price. If you LP ETH/USDC and ETH…
ICO
Initial Coin Offering — a token sale where a project raises capital by selling tokens to early buyers. ICOs peaked in 2017–2018 and largely…
HODL
Cryptocurrency slang for holding regardless of short-term price action, originating from a 2013 Bitcointalk forum post where a user misspelled "hold" as "hodl." Treated…