Knowledge base

Crypto & Blockchain Glossary

Plain-language definitions of the terms you need to know for token creation, liquidity management, and building on-chain.

SPL Token

An SPL token is the standard fungible token format on the Solana blockchain, equivalent to ERC-20 on Ethereum.

ERC-20 Token

ERC-20 is the most widely used token standard on Ethereum and EVM-compatible chains, defining how fungible tokens are created and transferred.

Liquidity Pool

A liquidity pool is a pair of tokens locked in a smart contract that enables decentralized trading on automated market makers (AMMs) like Raydium and Uniswap.

Mint Authority

The mint authority is the wallet address authorized to create new tokens for an SPL token on Solana. Revoking it permanently locks the token supply.

Freeze Authority

The freeze authority is the wallet address that can freeze (prevent transfers of) any token account for an SPL token on Solana.

Metaplex Token Metadata

Metaplex Token Metadata is a Solana program that stores human-readable information (name, symbol, image, description) for SPL tokens.

Smart Contract

A smart contract is a self-executing program stored on a blockchain that automatically enforces the rules of an agreement when predefined conditions are met.

Renounce Ownership

Renouncing ownership permanently removes the admin (owner) role from an ERC-20 smart contract, making it fully decentralized and immutable.

LP Tokens (Liquidity Provider Tokens)

LP tokens represent your share of a liquidity pool. They can be redeemed to withdraw your deposited assets or burned to permanently lock the liquidity.

Raydium

Raydium is the largest automated market maker (AMM) and liquidity protocol on Solana, supporting both CPMM and legacy AmmV4 pool types.

OpenBook Market

OpenBook (formerly Serum v2) is an on-chain order book protocol on Solana. Creating an OpenBook market is required for Raydium AmmV4 liquidity pools.

Token Burn

Token burning is the permanent, irreversible destruction of cryptocurrency tokens — reducing the circulating supply and making remaining tokens scarcer.

Impermanent Loss

Impermanent loss is the difference in value between holding tokens in a liquidity pool versus simply holding them in your wallet, caused by price divergence between the paired assets.

Gas Fees

Gas fees are the transaction costs paid to blockchain validators for processing and confirming transactions. They vary by chain — near-zero on Solana, variable on Ethereum.

Token-2022 (Token Extensions)

Token-2022 is Solana's next-generation token program that adds extensions like transfer fees, interest-bearing tokens, non-transferable tokens, and confidential transfers to SPL tokens.

DEX (Decentralized Exchange)

A DEX is a peer-to-peer exchange that enables cryptocurrency trading directly from your wallet without intermediaries, using smart contracts to match trades.

Crypto Wallet

A crypto wallet is software that stores your private keys and lets you sign blockchain transactions — the gateway to interacting with DeFi protocols, DEXes, and token creation tools.

Airdrop

An airdrop is a distribution of cryptocurrency tokens to multiple wallet addresses, typically used to reward early supporters, build community, or achieve decentralized token distribution.

Tokenomics

Tokenomics is the economic design of a cryptocurrency token — covering supply, distribution, utility, incentive mechanisms, and how these factors affect the token's value over time.

Slippage

Slippage is the difference between the expected price of a trade and the actual execution price, caused by insufficient liquidity or price movement between submission and execution.

Rug Pull

A rug pull is a type of crypto scam where a token creator removes all liquidity from a DEX pool, crashes the price to zero, and disappears with the funds.

Market Cap (Market Capitalization)

Market cap is the total value of all tokens in circulation, calculated as token price multiplied by circulating supply. It's the primary metric for comparing token sizes.

An Automated Market Maker is a type of decentralized exchange that uses mathematical formulas instead of order books to price trades, with liquidity provided by users rather than professional market makers.

Staking

Staking is the process of locking cryptocurrency tokens in a smart contract to secure a blockchain network or earn rewards, typically in the form of more tokens.

Whale

A whale is a wallet or individual that holds a very large amount of a specific cryptocurrency — enough to significantly move the market when buying or selling.

DeFi (Decentralized Finance)

DeFi is a category of blockchain-based financial services that operate without banks or intermediaries — including lending, borrowing, trading, and earning yield through smart contracts.

Seed Phrase (Recovery Phrase)

A seed phrase is a 12 or 24-word sequence that serves as the master backup for a crypto wallet — anyone with these words can access all funds in the wallet.

Uniswap

Uniswap is the largest decentralized exchange protocol on Ethereum and EVM-compatible chains, using automated market makers (AMMs) to enable permissionless token trading.

NFT (Non-Fungible Token)

An NFT is a unique, one-of-a-kind digital token on a blockchain that represents ownership of a specific asset — unlike fungible tokens (SPL, ERC-20) where every unit is identical.

Web3

Web3 is the vision of a decentralized internet where users own their data and digital assets, interact through blockchain wallets instead of accounts, and engage with applications via smart contracts.

TVL (Total Value Locked)

TVL measures the total amount of cryptocurrency deposited into a DeFi protocol's smart contracts — it's the primary metric for comparing DeFi protocol size and adoption.

Block Explorer

A block explorer is a web tool that lets you search and view all transactions, addresses, tokens, and smart contracts on a blockchain — like a search engine for on-chain data.

Gas (Transaction Fee)

Gas is the fee paid to blockchain validators for processing transactions. On Ethereum it's measured in gwei, on Solana it's called a priority fee — both compensate the network for computation.

Mainnet

Mainnet is the live, production blockchain where real transactions with real value occur — as opposed to testnets (devnet, Sepolia) which use fake tokens for testing.

Decimals (Token Precision)

Decimals define how divisible a token is — a token with 9 decimals (standard for Solana SPL) can be divided into 0.000000001 units, while 18 decimals (ERC-20 standard) allows even finer division.

Devnet (Developer Network)

A devnet is a test blockchain where developers can experiment with tokens, smart contracts, and DeFi without spending real money — using free test tokens instead.

Liquidity Lock

A liquidity lock permanently prevents anyone from removing tokens from a DEX liquidity pool — achieved by burning LP tokens or sending them to a dead address.

Token Supply (Total, Circulating, Max)

Token supply refers to how many tokens exist: total supply is all tokens ever created, circulating supply is tokens in public wallets, and max supply is the hard cap that can ever exist.

Private Key

A private key is a cryptographic secret that authorizes blockchain transactions — whoever has the private key controls the wallet and all its tokens. Never share it.

dApp (Decentralized Application)

A dApp is a web application that interacts with blockchain smart contracts instead of (or in addition to) traditional databases — enabling trustless, permissionless functionality.

Yield Farming

Yield farming is the practice of depositing tokens into DeFi protocols to earn rewards — typically by providing liquidity, staking tokens, or lending assets in exchange for interest or bonus tokens.

DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization)

A DAO is an organization governed by smart contracts and token-holder votes rather than a board of directors — members collectively make decisions through on-chain proposals and voting.

Bridge (Cross-Chain Bridge)

A blockchain bridge is a protocol that transfers tokens or data between two different blockchains — enabling assets created on one chain to be used on another.

DEX Aggregator

A DEX aggregator searches multiple decentralized exchanges simultaneously to find the best price for a token swap, splitting trades across pools to minimize slippage.

Wrapped Token

A wrapped token is a representation of a cryptocurrency on a different blockchain than its native chain — created by locking the original and minting an equivalent on the target chain.

Floor Price

Floor price is the lowest price at which a token or NFT is available for purchase on the market — it represents the minimum entry cost for buyers.

Blockchain

A blockchain is a distributed, immutable digital ledger that records transactions across a network of computers — the foundational technology behind all cryptocurrencies and tokens.

Altcoin

An altcoin is any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin — including Ethereum, Solana, and every token created on CoinDevTools. The term comes from "alternative coin."

Token Contract (Token Address)

A token contract is the unique blockchain address of a deployed token — it's the identifier you share with others so they can find, trade, and verify your token.

Minting

Minting is the process of creating new tokens on a blockchain — either during initial token creation or afterward (if the mint authority hasn't been revoked).

Proof of Stake (PoS)

Proof of Stake is a consensus mechanism where validators stake cryptocurrency to secure the network — replacing energy-intensive mining with capital-based security.

Layer 2 (L2)

A Layer 2 is a blockchain built on top of a Layer 1 (like Ethereum) that processes transactions faster and cheaper while inheriting the security of the underlying chain.

Token Metadata

Token metadata is the human-readable information attached to a token — name, symbol, description, image, and attributes that wallets and block explorers display.

Smart Contract Audit

A smart contract audit is a professional security review of code — identifying vulnerabilities, logic errors, and attack vectors before deployment.

Governance (On-Chain)

On-chain governance is the process of making protocol decisions through token-holder voting — proposals, votes, and execution happen transparently on the blockchain.

Total Supply

Total supply is all tokens that currently exist — minted minus burned. Set during creation and permanently lockable by revoking mint authority.

Whitepaper

A whitepaper is a detailed document explaining a crypto project's technology, tokenomics, use case, and roadmap — the primary resource investors and community members use to evaluate a project.

Liquidity Provider (LP)

A liquidity provider is anyone who deposits tokens into a DEX liquidity pool — earning trading fees in proportion to their share of the pool while enabling others to trade.

Consensus Mechanism

A consensus mechanism is the method a blockchain uses to agree on which transactions are valid — ensuring all nodes have the same copy of the ledger without a central authority.

ICO (Initial Coin Offering)

An ICO is a fundraising method where a project sells tokens to early investors before launch — similar to an IPO but for crypto tokens, often with less regulation.

Vesting

Vesting is a schedule that locks tokens and releases them gradually over time — preventing founders and early investors from selling their entire allocation immediately after launch.

Jupiter

Jupiter is the dominant DEX aggregator on Solana — it searches all Solana DEXes simultaneously to find the best swap price, and is where most Solana token trading volume flows through.

Burn Address (Dead Address)

A burn address is a wallet address with no known private key — tokens sent to it are permanently unrecoverable, effectively destroying them. Used to burn tokens and lock LP.

Transaction Hash (TxHash)

A transaction hash is a unique identifier for a blockchain transaction — a long string of characters that lets you look up any transaction on a block explorer to verify its status and details.

Phantom Wallet

Phantom is the most popular crypto wallet for Solana — a browser extension and mobile app that lets you store tokens, sign transactions, and interact with dApps like CoinDevTools.

MetaMask

MetaMask is the most popular crypto wallet for Ethereum and EVM-compatible chains — a browser extension and mobile app for managing ERC-20 tokens, signing transactions, and using dApps.

Solscan

Solscan is the primary block explorer for Solana — a web tool where you can search any token, wallet, transaction, or program on the Solana blockchain.

Etherscan

Etherscan is the primary block explorer for Ethereum — used to verify contracts, check transactions, view token holders, and confirm ownership status of ERC-20 tokens.

DEX Screener

DEX Screener is a real-time analytics platform that tracks new token launches, price charts, liquidity, and trading volume across all major decentralized exchanges and chains.

Memecoin

A memecoin is a cryptocurrency token inspired by internet memes, jokes, or cultural trends — typically launched with no formal utility, relying on community hype and viral marketing for value.

RugCheck

RugCheck is a Solana token analysis tool that automatically evaluates token safety by checking mint authority, freeze authority, LP burns, holder distribution, and other rug pull risk factors.

Market Maker

A market maker is an entity that provides liquidity on both sides of a market (buy and sell orders) to ensure smooth trading — in crypto, this role is often automated by AMM smart contracts.

IPFS (InterPlanetary File System)

IPFS is a decentralized file storage network where content is addressed by its hash — used in crypto for storing token images, metadata JSON files, and NFT assets permanently.

RPC Node

An RPC (Remote Procedure Call) node is a server that provides an API for reading blockchain data and submitting transactions — the bridge between your app/wallet and the blockchain network.

Multisig (Multi-Signature Wallet)

A multisig wallet requires multiple private key signatures to authorize a transaction — commonly used by DAOs and teams to prevent any single person from moving funds unilaterally.

Token Standard

A token standard is a set of rules that defines how tokens work on a specific blockchain — SPL on Solana and ERC-20 on Ethereum are the two most common fungible token standards.

Liquidity Mining

Liquidity mining is a DeFi incentive strategy where protocols distribute their governance tokens to users who provide liquidity — rewarding LPs beyond just trading fees.

Gas Limit

Gas limit is the maximum amount of gas units you're willing to spend on an Ethereum/Base transaction — it prevents runaway costs if a smart contract execution is unexpectedly complex.

Token Pair (Trading Pair)

A token pair is two tokens that form a trading market on a DEX — for example TOKEN/SOL or TOKEN/ETH. The pair defines what you can swap between in a liquidity pool.