Every term from every puzzle, in plain language. Search pizza, HODL, hash — or browse after you find them in a grid.
ACCOUNT
Externally owned accounts are key pairs you control. Contract accounts are code with their own storage.
ADDRESS
A public destination derived from a key. Safe to share — it's how people send you assets.
AIRGAP
A signing device that never touches the internet. PSBTs or QR codes carry unsigned transactions across the gap.
AMM
Automated market maker. A contract that prices trades with a formula like x·y = k instead of matching orders.
AMOUNT
How much you are sending. Double-check it — on a chain, most payments cannot be reversed.
ANON
Anonymous, or close. On a transparent chain, ‘anon’ is usually just an unused address.
AVALANCHE
A family of chains with fast finality. Subnets let apps launch their own rules beside the main one.
BATCH
Many L2 transactions packed into one L1 posting. Amortizing that cost is why fees drop.
BEACON
The proof-of-stake heart of Ethereum. It coordinates validators and is where consensus now lives.
BEAR
A down market, named for a bear swiping down. Quiet chats, cheap assets, and a lot of ‘I knew it’.
BITCOIN
The first public blockchain. A peer-to-peer electronic cash system proposed in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto.
BLOB
Cheap, temporary data space on Ethereum (EIP-4844) designed so rollups can post batches without crowding block gas.
BLOCK
A sealed batch of transactions plus a pointer to the previous block. Stack enough of them and you have a chain.
BONK
A Solana dog coin that became a community mascot there. Same lesson: fun is not a thesis.
BOOST
Extra rewards to attract users — points, airdrops, liquidity mining. Boosts end. Usage should not.
BRIDGE
A path for assets between chains. Lock on one side, mint a representation on the other — and know who holds the keys.
BULL
An up market, named for a bull tossing horns up. Easy to feel like a genius. That feeling is the trap.
BURN
Destroy a token by sending it to an unspendable address or calling a burn function. Supply goes down.
CALM
The goal. Check the chain, not only the group chat. Then decide.
CARDANO
A proof-of-stake chain that ships via peer-reviewed papers. Slow by design; its fans call that caution.
CASH
What a fully reserved coin is supposed to sit on. ‘Cash’ in a filing may mean bills, not bills-in-a-vault.
CHAIN
Blocks linked in order. Change one in the middle and every hash after it breaks — that's the tamper evidence.
CHAINLINK
The most widely used oracle network. Many DeFi apps read LINK feeds; that concentration is its own kind of risk.
CHECKSUM
Mixed-case letters in an address that detect typos. A checksummed address catching a wrong character can save a send.
CLOAK
Mixing your coins with others so the trail blurs. The math varies; the goal is the same.
CODE
The instructions. If you cannot see it, you are trusting someone else’s screenshot.
COIN
The native unit of a chain — bitcoin on Bitcoin, ether on Ethereum. People also say coin for almost any token.
COLLATERAL
Assets locked so you can borrow. If the value drops too far, the protocol sells it to cover the loan.
COLLECT
A token kept for its own sake — art, a pass, a game item. Value is social and scarce, not a cash-flow promise.
COMET
A visitor that burns bright and leaves. Plenty of tokens look like this from a year away.
COMMIT
A saved change to the code. Public commits are how you see who changed what, and when.
CONFIRM
A confirmation is one more block stacked on top of yours. More confirmations, harder to undo.
COSMOS
An internet of blockchains: many app-chains talking through IBC, instead of one mega-computer.
CRASH
A sudden drop. Leverage makes crashes deeper. If you cannot explain your loan, you are the crash.
CYCLE
Boom, bust, rebuild. Bitcoin’s four-year-ish rhythm around halvings is a pattern, not a law.
DAPP
A decentralized app: a web UI talking to contracts on-chain, so the backend isn't a single company's server.
DATA
The fact itself: a price, a match score, a temperature. Garbage in, liquidation out.
AVAILABILITY
The guarantee that anyone can download the data needed to reconstruct L2 state. Without it, you cannot exit or challenge.
DEGEN
Short for degenerate: high-risk trading, often of brand-new tokens. Some chats wear it as a joke. Treat it like a game budget, not rent.
DIAMOND
Hard, clear, and overused as an emoji. Diamond hands: you did not sell when it hurt.
DIFFICULTY
How hard it is to find the next block. It retargets so blocks stay near ten minutes even as hashpower changes.
DOGE
Dogecoin: started in 2013 as a joke, still a real chain. A reminder that culture can outrun a whitepaper.
DOLLAR
The unit most stablecoins copy. On-chain dollars are IOUs or formulas, not the Fed.
DRAINER
A malicious contract that, once approved or signed, sweeps NFTs and tokens. If a site asks you to 'verify wallet,' leave.
DYOR
Do your own research. A healthy habit — and a cop-out when someone uses it to dodge a question. Read the contract, not just the thread.
ETHEREUM
A programmable blockchain. Besides sending value, you can deploy code that lives on the network itself.
EVM
Ethereum Virtual Machine — the sandboxed CPU that executes contract bytecode on every full node.
FAITH
Belief without a new fact. Fine for a hobby. Risky as the only reason you still hold.
FEED
A stream of updates — ETH/USD every few seconds, for example. Stale feeds are how liquidations go wrong.
FEES
A small payment to whoever includes your transaction in a block. Higher fees usually mean a faster seat.
FLOKI
Named after a dog (and a Viking). Another mascot coin. Mascots spread; code still rules the wallet.
FOMO
Fear of missing out. The itch to buy because the chart is already up and everyone else seems in. It is how a lot of people buy the top.
FORK
A copy of the code (or of the chain) that goes its own way. Bitcoin Cash is a chain fork; a GitHub fork is just a copy.
FRAUD
A challenge that shows an optimistic batch was wrong. If it succeeds, the bad batch is thrown out and the proposer is penalized.
FUD
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Sometimes a real risk; sometimes a smear to talk a bag down. Separate the claim from the motive.
FUNGIBLE
Interchangeable: any unit is as good as any other. Ether and ERC-20 tokens are fungible; concert tickets usually are not.
GALAXY
The whole map of chains, apps, and communities. It is larger than any one ticker.
GAS
The unit of work for running a transaction. Complex contracts cost more gas; a fee market prices that work.
GREEN
Miners chase the cheapest megawatt, which is often leftover hydro, wind, or gas that would be flared.
HALVING
Every 210,000 blocks the miner subsidy is cut in half. That's how issuance tapers toward 21 million.
HANDS
Who is holding. Weak, paper, diamond — slang for how jumpy a holder is when price moves.
HARDWARE
A key that never leaves a dedicated device. Transactions are signed on the device after you read them on its screen.
HASH
A fixed-size fingerprint of any data. Flip one bit in the input and the output looks completely unrelated.
HEARTBEAT
How often the feed must update even if the price barely moved. Silence can be as dangerous as a lie.
HIDDEN
Amounts, senders, or memos that explorers cannot list. Hidden is not the same as untraceable forever.
HODL
Hold on for dear life. Started as a drunken 2013 typo of “hold” on Bitcointalk, then became a strategy: don’t panic-sell a crash.
HOLD
Keep the asset. The serious version of HODL: you know why you own it, and a red day is not new information.
HONEYPOT
A token you can buy but cannot sell — the contract lets the deployer out and traps everyone else. Read before you ape.
HOUSE
People joke those coins could have bought a house, then a block, then a museum. Hindsight is a luxury.
ISSUE
A public bug report or idea. Open issues are a map of what still hurts.
ISSUER
The party that mints and burns the coin. Many can freeze addresses. That is a feature for banks and a risk for you.
JOKE
How a lot of this started. Jokes are allowed. Mistaking a joke for a pension is the expensive part.
LAUNCH
The day a token or network goes live. A fair launch is open to everyone; a stealth launch is easy to abuse.
LEDGER
The official list of who owns what. On a public chain, anyone can audit it; no single clerk controls the books.
LENDING
Deposit assets to earn interest; borrow against collateral. Liquidation bots keep the system solvent.
LICENSE
The rules for using the code: MIT, GPL, Apache. ‘Open’ is not one thing — read the license.
LIGHTNING
A layer-2 payment network. Channels move bitcoin off-chain in bulk, then settle the net result on the base chain.
LIQUIDITY
Assets sitting in a pool so someone else can trade against them. Providers earn fees, and take on risk.
LITECOIN
An early Bitcoin fork: faster blocks, a different hash, silver to bitcoin’s gold in the old pitch.
MARKET
The place — an exchange, a pool, a group chat — where buyers and sellers meet.
MARKETPLACE
A venue that lists, bids, and settles token sales. The trade still settles as a contract call on the chain.
MASKS
Commitments and ring signatures that cover the real spend with decoys. More decoys, thicker mask.
MAY
May 22 is Bitcoin Pizza Day. People buy pizza with sats, post photos, and argue about whether he ‘lost’.
MEME
An idea that copies itself. In crypto, memes can reprice a token faster than any report.
MEMO
An optional note on some payments (exchanges often ask for one). The wrong memo can strand a deposit.
MEMPOOL
The waiting room of unconfirmed transactions. Miners pick from it, usually highest fee first.
MERGE
Accepting a change into the main code. Also the name of Ethereum’s switch to proof of stake.
METADATA
The name, image, and traits attached to a token. Often a URI pointing off-chain — check what actually is on-chain.
MINER
On proof-of-work chains, a miner races to find a valid hash. The winner proposes the next block and earns a reward.
MINING
Trying hashes until one is rare enough. The first miner to find it proposes the next block.
MINT
Create new tokens when someone deposits backing. Burn them when they cash out. That loop is the peg’s heartbeat.
MOON
A huge price run. “To the moon” is hope and marketing. Prices that only go up exist in screenshots, not in markets.
MULTISIG
A wallet that needs M-of-N signatures. One stolen key is not enough. Standard for treasuries and serious vaults.
NETWORK
The specific chain you are using. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others do not share addresses or fees.
NGMI
Not gonna make it. The dunk on someone selling, over-trading, or ignoring risk. Often a joke; sometimes a fair critique.
NODE
A computer that keeps a copy of the ledger and checks new blocks against the rules. More honest nodes, more resilience.
NONCE
A one-time number. In Ethereum it's your account's transaction count; reuse it and a send can be replayed or stuck.
OPTIMISTIC
Assume batches are valid, wait out a challenge window, and only run a fraud proof if someone disputes them.
ORACLE
A feed that brings off-chain data (prices, weather, scores) on-chain. Contracts cannot see the outside world alone.
ORBIT
A coin that circles a bigger one — a sidekick token, an L2 around Ethereum, a meme around bitcoin.
OWNERSHIP
On-chain, owning an NFT means your address is listed as owner. That is a record, not automatically a copyright.
PAPA
Papa John’s took the order. The pizzas were real. The payment went across a public chain.
PAPER
Sold at a scare. Sometimes that is wisdom (the project was a joke). Sometimes it is panic. Context matters.
PATCH
A fix. In crypto, a patch can be worth millions if it closes a bug before someone else finds it.
PATIENCE
The unglamorous skill. Cycles take years. Most chats are timed to hours.
PEER
Another node you gossip with. Blocks and transactions fan out peer to peer instead of through a central server.
PEGGED
Tied to another price. A peg is a promise plus a mechanism. When either fails, the price walks away.
PENDING
Seen by nodes, not yet in a block. It can sit, get replaced, or drop if the fee is too low.
PEPE
A cartoon frog that became a thousand tokens. Most copies are just copies. Check the contract, not the costume.
PHISHING
A fake site or message that wants your seed phrase or a signature. Bookmarks beat search ads. No one genuine asks for your seed.
PIZZA
Two of them, in Jacksonville, for 10,000 BTC. Crypto’s first widely told purchase. Taste: legendary. Price: a cautionary tale.
POLKADOT
A relay chain that secures many parachains. Shared security, separate apps.
POOL
Miners sharing work and splitting rewards so a small rig still earns a trickle instead of a lottery ticket.
POWER
Electricity in, security out. Cheap, clean power is why miners move to dams, flares, and cold climates.
PRICE
The last agreed rate. Charts feel like facts; they are just a trail of trades.
PRIVATE
The secret half. It must stay secret. Leak it and the assets at the matching address are gone.
PROOF
A costly puzzle whose solution is easy to check. Energy spent is what makes rewriting history expensive.
PUBLIC
The half of a key pair you can show the world. Addresses are usually a hash of this key.
RALLY
A fast climb inside a larger trend. Rallies in a bear can fake a new season.
RECEIVE
Share an address (or a QR code of one) so someone can pay you. You do not give them your keys.
RECOVERY
A plan for lost devices: seed backup, social recovery, or a second hardware key. Test it before you need it.
REKT
Wrecked: a brutal loss from leverage, a dump, or a bad trade. Liquidations are how REKT shows up on a perpetual exchange.
REPORT
One signed update from an oracle network. Many reports get aggregated so one liar cannot swing the price.
RESERVE
The assets backing the coin: cash, bills, other crypto. Ask what they are, who holds them, and how often they are checked.
REVIEW
Other people reading the change before it ships. Slow, boring, and how serious teams stay alive.
REVOKE
Clear a token approval you no longer want. Periodic cleanup of old DEX and marketplace allowances is basic hygiene.
REWARD
New coins plus fees, paid to the miner (or pool) that found the block. That is how coins are born.
RIGS
The machines — often special chips called ASICs — built to grind hashes all day.
RIPPLE
The company behind XRP, aimed at moving value between banks. Not a copy of Bitcoin’s mining model.
ROCKET
Shorthand for a sudden climb. Rockets also fall. Check the fuel (users, fees, a real product) before you board.
ROLLUP
A chain that executes transactions off the base layer, then posts a compressed batch (and usually a proof) back to it.
ROYALTY
A cut of secondary sales meant for the creator. Enforcement depends on the marketplace honoring it, not magic.
RUGPULL
Builders drain liquidity or abandon a project after raising funds. Check who can mint, pause, or withdraw from the contract.
SATOSHI
Both the unknown creator and the smallest unit: 100 million satoshis make one bitcoin.
SEASON
Alt season, meme season, calm season. Nicknames for where attention (and liquidity) is sitting.
SECRET
A key, a seed, a view key. Secrets are how privacy works — and how it breaks if you leak them.
SEED
A list of words that can regenerate every key in a wallet. Anyone who sees it can empty the wallet. Never type it into a website.
SEND
Broadcast a signed payment to the network. Until it is in a block, it is only a request.
SEQUENCER
The party that orders L2 transactions. Centralized sequencers are common today; the exit path back to L1 is the safety valve.
SHARDING
Splitting a chain into parallel pieces so it can process more data. Ethereum's current path is data shards (blobs), not extra EVMs.
SHIBA
The dog in the original meme, and later a family of tokens. Cute pictures are not a business model.
SHIELD
A pool or circuit that hides amounts and often addresses. Zcash calls shielded the notes you cannot see on a block explorer.
SIGN
Math that proves you hold a private key without revealing it. That's how a chain knows a spend is authorized.
SIGNATURE
Not all signatures send tokens. Some permit a contract to move them later (permits, typed data). Read the wallet prompt.
SIGNED
Oracle operators sign their reports. The contract checks the signatures before it believes the number.
SLICE
A piece of the pie — and of a coin. You do not need a whole bitcoin to hold some.
SLIPPAGE
The difference between the quoted price and what you actually get. Thin pools move more when you trade large.
CONTRACT
A program at an address. Once deployed, it runs as written — no admin password unless the author coded one in.
SOLANA
A high-speed chain that keeps one global clock (proof of history). Cheap, fast, and has had notable outages.
SOLIDITY
The main language for Ethereum contracts. It compiles down to EVM bytecode that the chain can run.
SPACE
The room a community claims: bitcoin as money, Ethereum as a computer, a meme coin as a joke that got a ticker.
SPEND
Use coins as money: a pizza, a domain, a gift. That is the original pitch, not only trading.
STABLE
A token meant to hold a steady price, usually one US dollar. Useful for trading and sending without the swing.
STAKING
Locking ether as collateral to help secure the chain. Misbehave and some of that stake can be slashed.
STARS
Favorite projects, and the people who promote them. Star-gazing is not the same as reading a whitepaper.
CHANNEL
Two (or more) parties lock funds, update a shared state off-chain as fast as they like, then settle the final version on-chain.
STEALTH
A one-time address so two payments to you do not look related on-chain. Used by Monero and some Ethereum tools.
STELLAR
A payments network (XLM) built for cheap cross-border sends. A cousin of Ripple’s original idea, with a different path.
STORM
A crash, an outage, a bad headline. Storms pass; some trees do not. Size positions so a storm is survivable.
STORY
We retell Pizza Day every May 22. Stories teach faster than charts — including the story of spending too early.
SWAP
An on-chain trade of one token for another, usually through a pool rather than an order book.
TETHER
USDT, the largest dollar token. Issued by Tether Ltd. Deeply used, long argued-over, and still the ocean of crypto trading.
TOKEN
A unit of value or access recorded on a chain — money, a vote, a ticket, a claim on something else.
APPROVAL
Permission for a contract to spend your tokens. Unlimited approvals are convenient and dangerous. Revoke what you don't use.
STANDARD
A shared interface so wallets and apps don't need custom code per project. ERC-20, ERC-721, and ERC-1155 are the big three.
TRADE
Exchange one asset for another. On a chain that is usually a swap; at an exchange it is an order book.
TREND
The direction that has been winning. Trends last longer than they should, then end faster than they should.
UNIT
A slice of a coin: satoshis, gwei, cents of a stablecoin. Small units make tiny payments possible.
UTXO
Unspent transaction output — Bitcoin's model of coins. You spend whole outputs and receive change, like cash.
VALIDATOR
After the Merge, Ethereum uses staked ether instead of miners. Validators propose and attest to blocks.
VALIDIUM
A ZK system that keeps data off-chain. Cheaper, but you now trust a data-availability committee not to withhold it.
VALUE
What someone will give you for it. On a screen it looks solid. In a thin market it can vanish.
VAULT
A tighter setup for larger sums — hardware keys, multisig, or a contract that rate-limits withdrawals.
VIRAL
Spreads because people share it, not because it is useful. Virality is a megaphone, not a moat.
WAGMI
We’re all gonna make it. Community pep talk. Fine as morale; dangerous as a substitute for a thesis.
WALLET
Software or hardware that holds keys and helps you sign. Think keychain, not piggy bank.
WHALE
A holder large enough to move the market. Watching whale wallets is a hobby; copying them blindly is how you buy their exit.
YIELD
Return from fees, interest, or rewards. High yield is often a sign of high risk, not a free lunch.
ZKPROOF
A proof that a computation is correct without re-running it. ZK-rollups use this so Ethereum can verify a batch cheaply.
Created by James Rule