MASTR CRYPTO WIKI
Glossary
Research articles and reference entries are published in English. Navigation is available in seven languages.
- Address lookup table
A Solana table storing full account addresses that supported v0 transactions can reference by compact indices. This saves message space but does not remove execution limits or the need to inspect the resolved accounts.
Solana address lookup tables: compressed references, full responsibilities →- Airdrop
Distribution of tokens to addresses, sometimes unsolicited. Receiving an asset does not authenticate a linked claim website.
Fake airdrops and claim pages →- Allowance
Permission for a spender to transfer a specified token on an owner's behalf. It can persist after one trade.
Token approvals outlive a trade →- Alternative hypothesis
A competing explanation for an observation. Shared infrastructure, exchange routing or custody can explain address interactions without implying that every address belongs to one person.
From a wallet graph to a finding someone else can reproduce →- AMM
Automated market maker: a system that uses liquidity pools and pricing rules to execute trades.
Concentrated liquidity: TVL can sit outside the trading range →- Attribution
An evidence-based connection between an account, action and responsible party. A transfer alone seldom identifies the human owner.
Wallet attribution: an address is not a person →- Audit scope
The version, components and assumptions included in a review, together with what the review excludes.
What an audit or scanner actually covers →- Auto-deleveraging
A derivatives venue's mechanism for reducing selected opposing positions when its liquidation and backstop arrangements cannot absorb a loss. The ranking and execution rules are venue-specific. An account can therefore have a profitable position reduced even when that account itself has not breached maintenance margin.
Insurance funds and ADL: who absorbs a derivatives shortfall? →- Back-running
Placing a transaction immediately after another to capture a resulting opportunity, such as arbitrage. It can restore prices while transferring value to whoever controls or wins ordering.
Maximal extractable value →- Bankruptcy estate
The legal pool of rights and property administered in an insolvency. Customers may receive claims against the estate rather than direct return of each asset they deposited.
FTX bankruptcy-claim valuation →- Bankruptcy price
In derivatives accounting, the price at which the margin allocated to a position would be exhausted under the applicable calculation. It is distinct from the liquidation trigger. Price gaps and execution costs can make liquidation proceeds insufficient, leaving the venue's loss-allocation mechanism to handle the shortfall.
Insurance funds and ADL: who absorbs a derivatives shortfall? →- Base fee
Under Ethereum's EIP-1559, a protocol-determined fee per unit of gas that adjusts with block utilisation and is burned. It is separate from the priority fee. A transaction's fee cap limits what the sender authorises; the cap is not necessarily the amount ultimately paid.
2021: EIP-1559 changes Ethereum fees and introduces base-fee burning →- Beneficial control
The person or group that ultimately directs an asset or account even when formal ownership is split across nominees or addresses. It requires evidence beyond transaction proximity.
Undisclosed insider allocations →- Beneficial owner
The person or entity with the underlying economic interest, which may differ from a custodian or transaction signer.
Wallet attribution: an address is not a person →- Blind signature
A signature protocol in which a signer can authorise a blinded message without seeing its unblinded form. Privacy depends on the complete protocol; it does not remove the need to prevent reuse of a payment token.
Before Bitcoin: privacy, digital cash and the missing agreement →- Blob
A data object introduced for Ethereum by EIP-4844, with a separate fee market and limited data-availability period. Rollups can use blobs to publish transaction data more economically. Blob data is not ordinary EVM contract storage, and long-term retrieval requires a separate retention strategy.
2024: Dencun gives rollups a separate data market →- Block explorer
A service that indexes chain data and presents decoded transactions, tokens and labels. It is a useful view, but labels and interpretation come from the service and should be checked against raw chain data.
Events and transaction logs →- Block subsidy
New bitcoin that a valid block may create under the issuance schedule. It is one component of the miner's block reward; transaction fees are the other. The subsidy halves every 210,000 blocks. A miner cannot make an excessive subsidy valid simply by adding more proof of work.
Bitcoin halvings: a programmed subsidy reduction →- BOLT 11
A standard for encoded Lightning payment requests containing fields such as a payment hash, timestamp, description and expiry, with an optional fixed amount. An invoice is a request, not evidence that a payment settled.
BOLT 11 invoices: what a Lightning payment request actually says →- Bridge
A mechanism connecting activity or assets across chains, with its own verification and custody assumptions.
Bridges and wrapped assets →- Bridge validator
A signer or node whose approval contributes to accepting a cross-chain message. A small threshold or shared operator can concentrate control over assets on several networks.
Bridge trust models →- Bundler
An ERC-4337 participant that selects UserOperations and submits them to the EntryPoint in a transaction. A bundler supplies a path to inclusion rather than ownership of the user's account. Availability, validation rules and fee incentives affect whether an operation will be accepted and submitted.
ERC-4337: programmable accounts without assuming one private key is enough →- Calldata
Read-only input bytes supplied to an EVM contract call. Decoding reveals the selected function and arguments, while internal calls and later state effects require further tracing.
Calldata →- CASP
Crypto-asset service provider. Under MiCA, authorisation concerns a specific legal entity and its permitted services.
Checking a crypto-provider authorisation →- Chain ID
A network identifier. Similar addresses on different networks do not make their balances interchangeable.
A ticker is not an asset identifier →- Challenge period
A specified interval in which an assertion can be contested under a dispute mechanism. In optimistic systems it can affect when a withdrawal is final; a fast interface confirmation is a separate milestone.
Rollups: execution is only one part of the security model →- Change output
A transaction output returning the unspent remainder of selected Bitcoin inputs to the spender's control. Inputs are consumed in full, so a payment commonly creates both a recipient output and a change output. Identifying change from transaction patterns is an inference, not proof of who owns an address.
Bitcoin UTXOs: the outputs behind a wallet balance →- Circuit breaker
A control that pauses or limits selected operations during abnormal conditions. It can contain an incident while concentrating emergency power in whoever controls the switch.
Role-based access control →- Circulating supply
The supply measure a data provider treats as circulating. Methodologies and exclusions can differ.
Market cap is not money available to withdraw →- Claim date
The date used to value or determine a bankruptcy claim under applicable orders and rules. Later asset-price changes do not automatically change a claim fixed in another currency.
FTX bankruptcy-claim valuation →- Clawback
A legal mechanism seeking return of certain pre-bankruptcy transfers. Whether a transfer is recoverable depends on jurisdiction, timing, recipient and applicable defences.
FTX bankruptcy-claim valuation →- Cliff
A scheduled point at which a previously restricted token allocation begins to unlock or becomes available.
KOL investors: same token, different deal →- Coinbase maturity
Bitcoin consensus restriction on newly created mining-reward outputs. A spend must be included at least 100 block heights after the block that created the output. This is distinct from ordinary deposit-confirmation policies.
Bitcoin coinbase maturity: why a new mining reward cannot move immediately →- Collateral factor
A parameter limiting how much debt an asset can support. It reflects protocol risk assumptions and can change through governance or administration.
Overcollateralised debt positions →- Commitment
A cryptographic value that binds a party or system to underlying information under specified assumptions. Checking supplied data against a commitment is different from obtaining missing data in the first place.
Data availability, historical storage and the limits of a hash →- Compute-unit price
In Solana’s legacy/v0 compute-budget model, a micro-lamport price multiplied by the requested compute limit determines the prioritisation fee after rounding. The V1 format instead sets an absolute prioritisation amount.
Solana priority fees: the compute limit is part of the price →- Concentrated liquidity
Liquidity allocated to selected price ranges. A position can hold value outside the active range.
Concentrated liquidity: TVL can sit outside the trading range →- Confirmation depth
The number of blocks built after the block containing a transaction. Greater depth usually reduces ordinary reorganisation risk, but the relationship depends on consensus and attacker capability.
Confirmations and reorganisations →- Content identifier (CID)
An identifier for content in systems such as IPFS. Its components describe how content is addressed; the identifier is not necessarily the ordinary hash of a whole file. Possessing a CID does not guarantee that a provider retains the bytes.
IPFS and content addressing: authenticity is not persistence →- Contract address
The network-specific identifier of a deployed contract. A token name is not a substitute for it.
A ticker is not an asset identifier →- Control plane
The mechanisms that can change a system’s operation, such as upgrade roles, configuration keys and emergency permissions. They may have greater practical authority than the ordinary user-facing workflow suggests.
Smart accounts: recovery, delegation and the new control map →- Copy execution risk
The chance that a follower's timing, prices and costs differ materially from those of the observed trader.
Copy trading: the leader's profit is not your result →- Counterfactual account
A smart account whose intended address can be determined before its contract is deployed. Correct signature verification may require preparation context; an empty address is not necessarily an ordinary key-controlled account.
ERC-6492: signatures from an account that is not deployed yet →- Custodian
A party that controls or administers assets for others, introducing account and counterparty dependencies.
Custody: what you control and what you depend on →- DAO
An organisation using onchain governance mechanisms. Public voting does not ensure widely distributed control.
DAO governance: transparent votes can still concentrate power →- Data availability
Whether the data required to reconstruct or verify a system's state can be obtained.
Layer 2: five separate questions →- Data availability sampling
A technique for assessing whether encoded block data is available by requesting sampled portions. Its confidence depends on the encoding, sampling and network assumptions; it is not indefinite archival storage.
Data availability, historical storage and the limits of a hash →- Delegatecall
An EVM operation that runs another contract's code while using the caller's storage and execution context. It enables proxies and modularity but can hand full state control to the selected implementation.
Delegatecall authority →- Denominator
The population or base used to calculate a percentage or rate. A failure rate for all submitted transactions is not the same measure as a failure rate for a selected class of trades.
What the dashboard counts: addresses, transactions, volume and people →- Depeg
A deviation from an asset's intended reference value, such as a stablecoin trading below one dollar.
Stablecoins: the peg and the claim behind it →- Derivation path
A sequence describing which child keys a hierarchical deterministic wallet derives from root material. The same recovery phrase used with another path can show different accounts, so recovery requires network, scheme and path information.
Hierarchical deterministic derivation →- DEX
Decentralised exchange. Its contracts, frontend, administrators and liquidity providers still need separate evaluation.
Market makers: inventory, fees and conflicts →- Digital signature
Cryptographic evidence that a private key authorised specific data. A valid signature proves control of the key for that message; it does not prove that the signer understood the message or that the surrounding website was honest.
Private keys and control →- Directional capacity
The amount a payment-channel route can transfer in a particular direction under its current balances. Total channel funding does not mean the entire amount is spendable in both directions.
The scaling debate: block space, verification and the right to exit →- Disgorgement
An amount required to be surrendered under a legal resolution, distinct from a penalty or compensation to every buyer.
Kim Kardashian and EthereumMax →- DNSSEC
DNS Security Extensions authenticate signed DNS records through a chain of trust. They do not encrypt webpage traffic or certify the honesty of an application reached through the domain.
DNSSEC and HTTPS: two checks behind a wallet website →- Encumbrance
A restriction or competing claim affecting an asset, such as a pledge securing a loan. An asset can exist while being unavailable to meet ordinary customer withdrawals. A reserve assessment therefore needs information about rights and obligations as well as evidence that the reported assets are present.
Reserve assets and liabilities: the missing half of a solvency claim →- Erasure coding
Encoding data with redundancy so that the original can be reconstructed from a sufficient subset of encoded pieces. The reconstruction threshold and assumptions depend on the scheme.
Data availability, historical storage and the limits of a hash →- Event log
Indexed data emitted during EVM execution for applications and explorers. Logs support search and interpretation but do not themselves enforce balances or prove the truth of human-readable labels.
Events and transaction logs →- Evidence preservation
Retention of source records with dates, identifiers and provenance sufficient to inspect a claim later. Keeping only a screenshot or a current dashboard total can lose context needed for reconstruction.
From a wallet graph to a finding someone else can reproduce →- Exit liquidity
The counterparties or pool assets available when a holder sells. Headline valuation is not a measure of it.
Market cap is not money available to withdraw →- Extended public key
Public derivation material that can generate a branch of addresses without spending authority. Exposure can reveal balances and transaction history across that branch and can become dangerous when combined with certain child private keys.
Hierarchical deterministic derivation →- Fault proof
A mechanism for challenging an invalid rollup state claim under specified rules. Its protection depends on more than a published verifier: data must be available, challenges must be possible, and the protocol's time limits and permissions must be understood. Implementations differ in their upgrade and operational controls.
Optimistic rollups: claims, challenges and the exit route →- FDV
Fully diluted valuation: price multiplied by a broader token supply assumption, often total or maximum supply.
Market cap is not money available to withdraw →- Finality
The degree to which a transaction or state is considered settled under a system's rules and assumptions.
Bitcoin: settlement, mining and custody →- Finality gadget
A consensus component that applies votes or checkpoints to finalise blocks under defined assumptions. It does not protect application code or external bridges from their own faults.
Economic and protocol finality →- Flash loan
Uncollateralised liquidity that must be repaid within the same atomic transaction. It amplifies available capital but becomes an exploit only when another component accepts a manipulable or inconsistent state.
Flash loans →- Forced inclusion
A mechanism intended to let a user get a transaction into a system despite an uncooperative ordinary sequencer. Eligibility, delay and implementation details determine whether the route is practical.
Rollups: execution is only one part of the security model →- Forward-confirmed reverse resolution
Checking that the name claimed by an address resolves forward to that same address. In ENS this prevents treating an unverified reverse record as established name ownership; it does not prove a person’s identity.
ENS names: why a reverse record needs a forward check →- Freeze authority
A permission that can restrict token accounts under a token programme's rules.
Solana: wallets, token accounts and authority →- Front-running
Placing an action before a known pending action to capture an advantage. Proof requires ordering and information evidence; an earlier timestamp alone does not establish how the actor learned about the later order.
Maximal extractable value →- Funding rate
A periodic payment mechanism used by perpetual futures to encourage their price to track a reference market. The payer, calculation, interval and caps depend on the venue. Funding is separate from trading fees and price profit or loss; a trade can lose money despite receiving funding.
Perpetual funding: a transfer between position holders →- Gas
A measure or charge for network computation and execution. Paying no gas for a signature does not make it harmless.
Signed permits: a message can authorise spending →- Gateway
A service that makes content or a network accessible through another protocol, often HTTP. A gateway is an access path, not proof that content is authentic, permanently stored or independently replicated.
IPFS and content addressing: authenticity is not persistence →- Governance executor
The contract or authorised role that performs actions approved or scheduled through governance. A vote alone does not show which calls can be executed or whether another authority can intervene.
DAO governance: follow the vote all the way to execution →- Governance quorum
The participation requirement for a governance decision, whose exact definition depends on the system.
DAO governance: transparent votes can still concentrate power →- Gross versus net proceeds
Gross proceeds are receipts before specified costs. Net proceeds subtract the relevant fees and expenses. A profit calculation additionally requires cost basis and consistent treatment of inventory and transfers.
The launch economy: bots, bundles and the meaning of a holder count →- Guardian
An account or party with a defined role in recovery or approval. Guardians can reduce the risk of losing 1 key but can also collude, be socially engineered or use an overly powerful recovery path.
Smart-account validation →- Halving
A scheduled reduction in Bitcoin's block subsidy. The interval is measured in blocks, so calendar dates are approximate until the relevant block arrives. A halving changes new issuance, not the supply already held by investors, and does not establish a rule for the market price.
Bitcoin halvings: a programmed subsidy reduction →- Hash time locked contract (HTLC)
A conditional arrangement combining a hash-based claim condition with a time limit. It can coordinate linked payments; operational details, deadlines and failure handling remain important.
The scaling debate: block space, verification and the right to exit →- Health factor
A protocol-specific measure of a collateralised position's margin before liquidation conditions are met.
Leverage and liquidation →- ICO
Initial coin offering: a token fundraising arrangement whose rights and distribution terms require examination.
The ICO era: selling access to a future product →- Impermanent loss
The difference between a liquidity position's value and a comparison strategy holding the same initial assets, before or after fees as explicitly defined. The word impermanent does not prevent the loss becoming realised on withdrawal.
Constant-product pool arithmetic →- Implementation contract
The code address to which a proxy delegates execution. Users interact with the proxy address, so the active implementation and its upgrade history must be resolved separately.
Proxy implementation changes →- Inbound liquidity
Capacity that can move towards a Lightning recipient through a channel or route. It depends on directional balances and constraints, not just total channel capacity or the recipient’s displayed wallet balance.
Lightning inbound liquidity: why a funded wallet may still fail to receive →- Index price
A reference assembled from selected external markets. Constituents, weights, outages, stale data and exclusions determine whether it represents the market during stress.
Exchange mark-price discretion →- Indexer
A service that organises blockchain data for queries and interfaces. Its view may be delayed or incomplete.
A running chain can have an inaccessible app →- Interest-rate model
Rules that change borrowing and lending rates according to utilisation or other state. Advertised annual rates can move sharply and do not guarantee a fixed return.
Overcollateralised debt positions →- Internal call
A call made by contract execution rather than submitted as a separate top-level transaction. Explorers reconstruct these traces from execution; they are not standalone signed transactions.
Calldata →- IPNS
InterPlanetary Name System: a naming mechanism using signed records to point a stable name to an updatable content path. Protecting the update key, keeping records fresh and retaining the referenced data are separate tasks.
IPNS: a stable name for content that can change →- Jito bundle
A group of signed Solana transactions submitted for sequential, atomic execution through Jito’s bundle path. Submission is not settlement, and documented rebroadcast conditions limit the scope of bundle-level guarantees.
Jito bundles: ordering, tips and the limits of protection →- KOL
Key opinion leader: a person whose audience gives them distribution power. The label does not demonstrate expertise or independence.
KOL investors: same token, different deal →- Last valid block height
A block-height boundary associated with a recent Solana blockhash. Confirmation logic uses validity information together with signature status; a client’s wall-clock timeout alone does not prove that a transaction expired.
Solana transaction expiry: submitted is not confirmed →- Layer 2
A scaling system relying on a base chain for part of settlement or security; implementations have different assumptions.
Layer 2: five separate questions →- Liabilities
Present obligations to customers, lenders and other claimants. Reserve analysis requires a complete and consistently valued liability set rather than only public wallet balances.
Fake proof-of-reserves claims →- Light client
Software that verifies compact chain evidence instead of trusting a full remote account of state. Its assumptions depend on the consensus, headers and checkpoints it verifies.
Light-client verification →- Light-client bridge
A bridge design whose verifier checks information about another chain using a light-client mechanism. Its security still depends on the verified rules, implementation, upgrades and source-chain assumptions.
Bridges: a message, a verifier and a claim on another chain →- Liquid staking token
A transferable token representing a position in a staking arrangement. Its value and exit route depend on the issuer's accounting, protocol rules and liquidity. Selling it on a market is different from redeeming through the protocol. Neither route necessarily provides an immediate exit at the displayed reference value.
Liquid staking: a tradable receipt for a less immediate underlying position →- Liquidation bonus
The discount or reward given to a liquidator for closing an unhealthy position. It protects execution incentives while transferring additional value from the borrower.
Collateral liquidation →- Liquidity
The ability to trade an amount with acceptable execution. It depends on size, price, timing and market structure.
Slippage, price impact and the price you actually receive →- Liquidity mining
Distribution of tokens or other rewards to encourage liquidity provision or related activity. Incentivised participation can differ from demand that remains after rewards stop.
DeFi’s expansion: pooled liquidity, collateral and rented activity →- Liquidity position
An allocation of assets to a pool, sometimes within a selected price range and controlled by a position owner.
Concentrated liquidity: TVL can sit outside the trading range →- Loan-to-value ratio
Debt divided by the assessed value of collateral. Borrowing limits and liquidation thresholds may use different ratios, and oracle changes alter the result without any new borrowing.
Overcollateralised debt positions →- LP token
A transferable representation of a liquidity position in some pool designs. Whoever controls it may be able to redeem underlying reserves, subject to protocol rules.
Liquidity withdrawal as an exit →- Maintenance margin
The minimum equity required to keep a leveraged position open under a venue's rules. Falling below it can trigger liquidation. The relevant equity calculation may include other positions, collateral haircuts, fees and funding. It should not be confused with the higher margin needed to open a position.
Liquidation: the threshold, the execution and the remaining debt →- Mark price
A reference used by a derivatives venue for unrealised profit, margin and liquidation. It may combine indexes, impact prices and clamps rather than equal the latest trade.
Exchange mark-price discretion →- Mark-to-market
A valuation using a reference market price. It does not prove that the position was sold for that amount.
TRUMP: 30 pools, two dominant markets →- Market cap
Price multiplied by a stated supply measure, not total money invested or available for withdrawal.
Market cap is not money available to withdraw →- Market maker
A participant or firm providing trading liquidity, often under an inventory, spread or fee arrangement.
Market makers: inventory, fees and conflicts →- Mempool
A node's collection of valid transactions waiting for inclusion. There is no single universal mempool, and private order flow can hide transactions from ordinary observers.
Public mempools →- Message verifier
The component deciding whether a cross-chain message is authentic and final enough to execute. A bug or compromised signer set can create destination claims without source backing.
Cross-chain message execution →- Metadata mutability
The ability to change the information referenced by a token, name or application. A persistent token identifier can coexist with editable metadata or changing external content.
NFTs after the boom: the token, the artwork and the permission →- Metadata URI
An address or identifier through which an NFT's metadata may be retrieved. The metadata can point onward to an image or other media. Token ownership, metadata mutability and content availability are separate questions. A persistent token record does not automatically preserve the associated offchain files.
NFT metadata: where the image and its description actually live →- MEV
Value obtained by selecting, inserting, excluding or reordering transactions. The term covers arbitrage and liquidations as well as harmful extraction, so the exact action and victim impact should be named.
Maximal extractable value →- Minimum output
The smallest output amount an exact-input swap is authorised to accept under its tolerance rules. It is different from the expected quote and from the amount that ultimately settles.
Jupiter quotes: expected output, minimum output and the actual exit →- Mint
In Solana token analysis, the account identifying a token and its issuance properties. It is not a holder wallet.
Solana: wallets, token accounts and authority →- Mint authority
A permission to issue additional token units under the applicable programme or contract rules.
Solana: wallets, token accounts and authority →- Multisig
An authority requiring a threshold of signatures. The signers are not necessarily independent people or organisations.
Upgrade authority and the limits of renounced ownership →- MuSig2
A multiparty Schnorr signing protocol specified in BIP-327. In its ordinary form, all participating signers cooperate to produce a signature for an aggregate key. It is not automatically an any-m-of-n recovery policy.
Schnorr and MuSig2: several signers, one Bitcoin signature →- Nonce
A value used to distinguish operations or prevent replay in a particular protocol. Its meaning depends on context.
Signed permits: a message can authorise spending →- Oracle
A mechanism supplying external information, often prices, to a contract.
Oracles: which price controls the contract? →- Output descriptor
A structured description of Bitcoin output scripts, keys and derivation information. A public descriptor can support a watch-only wallet without granting spending authority; a descriptor containing private keys is secret material.
Bitcoin output descriptors: the wallet backup beyond a seed →- Owner renunciation
A transaction removing or transferring a particular owner role. It proves only that named role changed; proxy administrators, mint authorities, modules and privileged lists may remain.
Proxy-upgrade rugs →- Passkey
A public-key authentication credential used through WebAuthn and related systems. The relying-party scope helps resist credential phishing. How it relates to wallet spending and account recovery depends on the product architecture.
Passkeys and crypto wallets: easier login, a new recovery map →- Pause authority
An account or role able to suspend contract functions. Review must identify which actions pause, which continue, who can resume and whether the authority can freeze user exits.
Role-based access control →- Paymaster
An ERC-4337 contract that can cover gas costs for UserOperations under its own conditions. Sponsorship may depend on an app, token payment or service policy. A sponsored transaction still executes with consequences for the account; absence of an upfront native-token fee does not establish safety.
ERC-4337: programmable accounts without assuming one private key is enough →- Permanent delegate
A Token-2022 authority that can transfer or burn tokens from any account for that mint. Holders cannot revoke it from their individual token account.
Token-2022 extensions →- Permit
A signed authorisation that can establish or use token spending permission, depending on the mechanism.
Signed permits: a message can authorise spending →- Pinning
In IPFS, retaining selected content so that a node does not discard it through ordinary garbage collection. Persistence still depends on the node, service and retention arrangement remaining available.
IPFS and content addressing: authenticity is not persistence →- PnL
Profit and loss. A useful figure specifies its period, cost basis, fees and realised versus unrealised treatment.
PnL screenshots: the missing denominator →- Price impact
The effect of an order's size on execution through available liquidity.
Slippage, price impact and the price you actually receive →- Price oracle
A mechanism that supplies external or derived values to contracts. Source markets, update rules, staleness checks and administrator overrides determine how safely the value can support credit or settlement.
Oracle staleness →- Priority fee
The part of an Ethereum transaction's execution fee intended to compensate the block producer, in addition to the burned base fee. The amount actually paid is constrained by the transaction's fee settings. A larger fee cannot fix a transaction that fails a contract's own conditions.
Gas: resource usage and transaction price →- Private allocation
Tokens obtained under negotiated terms before or apart from public-market purchases.
KOL investors: same token, different deal →- Private key
Secret signing material used to authorise actions under an account or script. Exposure normally cannot be repaired by changing a password; the assets and permissions must be moved to keys generated in a trusted environment.
Private keys and control →- Proof of liabilities
Evidence about obligations owed by an entity under a stated scope and method. Completeness, omitted creditors, timing and asset restrictions matter when assessing whether reserves cover obligations.
The credit layer: why visible reserves are not a complete balance sheet →- Proof of reserves
Evidence that specified assets exist and are controlled at a point in time. It does not establish complete liabilities, ownership rights, encumbrances or future access unless those are included separately.
Fake proof-of-reserves claims →- Proof of stake
A consensus family using stake and protocol rules for participation and security. Each deployment must be assessed separately.
Ethereum: applications share a settlement system →- Proof of work
A consensus mechanism using computational work to support agreement on transaction history.
Bitcoin: settlement, mining and custody →- Proxy
A contract arrangement that can delegate execution to another implementation; administration may permit changing that implementation.
Upgrade authority and the limits of renounced ownership →- Public key
A value derived from a private key and used to verify signatures. Publishing it does not normally reveal the private key, but reuse and associated addresses can expose activity patterns.
Private keys and control →- Realised profit
A gain measured from completed disposals under a stated cost and fee method, distinct from a current paper valuation.
PnL screenshots: the missing denominator →- Redemption
Exchanging a token or claim for its underlying asset under the issuer's or protocol's terms.
Stablecoins: the peg and the claim behind it →- Redemption eligibility
The conditions determining who may exchange a token directly with its issuer or system. Access can depend on account status, jurisdiction, minimum amounts and operational terms.
Stablecoins: the token, the reserves and the redemption queue →- Reentrancy
A condition where an external call re-enters code before the first execution has completed its state changes. Exploitability depends on reachable paths, call order and whether critical invariants are restored.
Reentrancy →- Referral income
Compensation triggered by an introduced user's activity, such as registration, deposits or trading fees.
Referral income: a promoter can profit when you overtrade →- Rehypothecation
Reuse of assets received as collateral or custody for another loan, pledge or investment. It creates additional claims on the same economic value and can block withdrawals during stress.
Customer-asset rehypothecation →- Relative timelock
A spending condition whose delay is measured from the confirmation of the output being spent. It differs from an absolute height or time condition, and does not broadcast a transaction when the delay ends.
Bitcoin timelocks: a calendar condition versus a coin’s age →- Reorganisation
Replacement of recent chain history when nodes accept a competing valid branch. Transactions can move, disappear or execute against different prior state.
Confirmations and reorganisations →- Replay protection
Rules preventing an already authorised message or transaction from being validly executed again or in another domain. Chain ID, nonce and message-specific state commonly contribute.
Transaction nonces →- Reserve factor
The share of lending interest directed to a protocol reserve or treasury rather than suppliers. It changes depositor yield and the resources available to absorb selected losses.
Overcollateralised debt positions →- Resolver
A component that turns a name into records such as an address or content reference. Control over the name and control over its resolver settings should be checked separately and at a stated time.
Names and sign-in: readable identity without assuming trust →- Restaking
Reuse of stake or delegated economic security for additional services. Rewards come with correlated software, governance and slashing exposure across those services.
Restaking and correlated risk →- Risk engine
Rules and systems that calculate margin, limits, liquidation and other controls. Public descriptions are incomplete if affiliated or privileged accounts receive exemptions.
FTX privileged Alameda account →- RPC
An interface used by wallets and applications to query or submit information to a blockchain node or service.
A running chain can have an inaccessible app →- Rug pull
A broad informal label for extraction or abandonment. An investigation should identify the specific mechanism and evidence.
Rug pulls: identify which control caused the loss →- Sampling bias
A systematic difference between observed records and the population a claim is meant to describe. Public repositories, labelled wallets or migrated tokens can omit important unobserved groups.
What the dashboard counts: addresses, transactions, volume and people →- Sandwich attack
A sequence that trades before and after a victim's swap, moving the pool price against the victim and then reversing the attacker's position. Slippage tolerance and order visibility set the available extraction.
Sandwich attacks →- Script path
A Taproot spending route that reveals a script and proves its inclusion in the output's committed script tree. It is an alternative to the key path. The conditions actually exercised become visible, while unrelated branches can remain undisclosed. The transaction still exposes inputs, outputs and amounts.
2021: Taproot changes Bitcoin's spending paths →- Seed phrase
Recovery material from which wallet keys can be derived. Sharing it can transfer spending control.
Custody: what you control and what you depend on →- Sequencer
A component responsible for ordering transactions in some scaling systems. Its powers depend on the deployment.
Layer 2: five separate questions →- Sequencer preconfirmation
An early indication about intended transaction ordering or execution from a sequencer or related service. It is not automatically equivalent to settlement-chain finality or immediate withdrawal availability.
Rollups: execution is only one part of the security model →- Session key
A limited key intended to authorise actions for a period, application or policy without exposing the account's main authority. Its safety depends on the enforced scope, revocation path and any contract upgrades.
Smart-account validation →- Side letter
A private agreement that modifies economic or governance terms outside the main public document. It can change transfer rights, discounts, liquidity or information access.
Vesting side letters →- Sign-In with Ethereum (SIWE)
A structured authentication message specified by ERC-4361. Its fields bind the login to a domain, address and nonce, with additional timing or request information. Authenticating key control is different from approving token spending.
Names and sign-in: readable identity without assuming trust →- Signature domain
The context used to distinguish a signature’s intended application, chain, contract or purpose. Domain separation helps prevent a message signed for one context from being accepted in another; the exact enforced fields matter.
The signing boundary: a valid signature can authorise the wrong thing →- Signer
A key or account whose approval contributes to authorising a transaction. Displayed signer counts are incomplete unless independence, recovery, delegation and module execution are also known.
Multisignature thresholds →- Slashing
A protocol penalty applied to specified validator misconduct. The exact offence, detection and penalty must be read from the live rules; slashing does not cover every outage or exploit.
Slashing conditions →- Slippage
The difference between an expected and achieved execution price or amount.
Slippage, price impact and the price you actually receive →- Smart account
An account whose authorisation is enforced by programmable contract logic. Thresholds, guardians, session keys and recovery can be added, while modules and upgrades create additional routes that require review.
Smart-account validation →- Snapshot
A record of data at a specified time. Market values and permissions can change afterward.
How to write a finding people can check →- Solvency
The ability of an entity to meet obligations based on the value and availability of assets relative to liabilities. Liquidity timing, encumbrances and legal priority can matter even when gross assets look large.
Fake proof-of-reserves claims →- Spot price
The price for immediate exchange in a particular market. Different venues and trade sizes can produce different spot prices, and a thin last trade is not sufficient evidence of portfolio liquidation value.
Constant-product pool arithmetic →- Stablecoin
A token designed to track a reference value. Backing, redemption and control differ by design.
Stablecoins: the peg and the claim behind it →- State root
A cryptographic commitment to a particular state representation. A proof can establish that a value belongs to the state committed by that root. The root is useful only with the correct chain, block and trust assumptions; an inclusion proof against an arbitrary root does not authenticate the root itself.
Merkle proofs: verify inclusion against a known commitment →- Storage collision
Two contract implementations interpret the same storage position for different values. In upgradeable systems, an incompatible layout can overwrite ownership, balances or configuration without an ordinary transfer.
Contract storage layout →- Survivorship bias
A distorted result caused by observing only the examples that remain visible or meet a success criterion.
Survivorship bias in calls, rankings and research →- Taproot
A Bitcoin upgrade combining Schnorr signatures with a new output construction and script rules. An output can be spent through its key path or by revealing an applicable script path. Unused script branches need not be disclosed in a script-path spend. Taproot does not make the entire transaction anonymous.
2021: Taproot changes Bitcoin's spending paths →- Threshold
The number or weight of approvals required from a signer set. A 3-of-5 threshold does not prove 5 independent people or devices; common custody can collapse the effective threshold.
Multisignature thresholds →- Tick
A discrete position in a concentrated-liquidity pool’s price grid. Tick boundaries organise the ranges where positions provide active liquidity. Tick spacing is a configuration constraint, not a prediction of price movement.
Concentrated liquidity: ticks, active capital and fee growth →- Timelock
A mechanism that delays execution after an action is queued. Its protection depends on the delay, who can cancel or bypass it, and whether users have a practical exit before execution.
Proxy implementation changes →- Token account
A Solana account holding a particular token under an owner authority; it is not necessarily an independent investor.
Solana: wallets, token accounts and authority →- Transfer hook
A Token-2022 extension that invokes a programme during token transfers. Wallets and protocols must account for the extra execution and any accounts or policy it requires.
Token-2022 extensions →- Turnover
Gross trading activity over a stated period under a defined counting method. The same capital can circulate repeatedly, so turnover should not be relabelled as new investment or user profit.
What the dashboard counts: addresses, transactions, volume and people →- TVL
Total value locked under a stated methodology. It need not equal active trading liquidity or independent capital.
Concentrated liquidity: TVL can sit outside the trading range →- TWAP
A time-weighted average price calculated from observations across a window. It reduces dependence on 1 instant while adding latency and relying on the liquidity and integrity of the observed market.
Time-weighted average prices →- Unlock
A release of restrictions on an allocation. It creates potential availability, not proof of an immediate sale.
KOL investors: same token, different deal →- Unrealised profit
A paper gain on assets still held, dependent on valuation and the ability to exit.
PnL screenshots: the missing denominator →- Upgrade administrator
The authority able to change a proxy's implementation or configuration. Owner renunciation elsewhere does not remove this power when it is held in a different contract or role.
Proxy implementation changes →- UserOperation
In ERC-4337, a structured request representing an operation for a smart account. It is submitted through an alternative transaction flow and processed via an EntryPoint contract. The account's validation logic determines authorisation. A readable request still needs review of its calls, account rules and fee arrangements.
ERC-4337: programmable accounts without assuming one private key is enough →- UTXO
An unspent transaction output: a specific output from an earlier Bitcoin transaction that remains available to spend. A new transaction consumes selected outputs in full and creates new outputs. A wallet's displayed balance aggregates the outputs it can spend; it is not a single account balance stored by the network.
Bitcoin UTXOs: the outputs behind a wallet balance →- Validity proof
A cryptographic proof checked against a specified statement and verification system, commonly used to establish that a rollup state transition follows its rules. It does not, by itself, establish data availability, independent governance, a safe bridge or the accuracy of a website's interpretation of a transaction.
Validity rollups: proving a state transition →- Validium
An execution system using validity proofs while keeping transaction data outside the settlement chain. The external data-availability arrangement creates dependencies distinct from those of an onchain-data rollup.
Rollups: execution is only one part of the security model →- Vesting
Rules controlling when an allocation becomes available to its recipient.
KOL investors: same token, different deal →- Voting checkpoint
A recorded historical voting weight at a specified timepoint. The contract’s clock mode, delegation rules and the proposal’s snapshot determine its meaning; present token balances do not rewrite that history.
Governance checkpoints: whose votes counted, and when? →- VWAP
Volume-weighted average price: the sum of trade price multiplied by traded amount, divided by total traded amount over a defined dataset. It describes that dataset, not current executable depth.
TWAP and VWAP: averages answer different questions →- Wallet module
An extension of a modular smart account. Modules can validate, execute or add other behaviour, so installation and removal are authority changes that need to be understood by capability, not just by a plugin name.
ERC-7579: wallet modules are part of the authority map →- Wash trading
Trading that creates apparent activity without a genuine change in beneficial ownership.
Wash trading and the appearance of demand →- Watchtower
A service that monitors payment-channel activity for conditions requiring a protective response. Its abilities depend on the channel protocol and the information and authority supplied to it.
The scaling debate: block space, verification and the right to exit →- Withdrawal queue
An ordered or otherwise constrained process governing when an exit request can be fulfilled. A liquid secondary-market receipt does not remove delays or conditions in the underlying redemption route.
Staking receipts and restaking: one asset, several dependencies →- Witness
Data used to satisfy the spending conditions of a Bitcoin transaction, such as signatures. Segregated Witness changes how this data is committed to and counted toward block capacity. Transaction identifiers and witness transaction identifiers cover different serialisations; the distinction matters when tracing dependent transactions.
Transaction malleability: when an identifier changes →- Wrapped asset
A representation of another asset whose value depends on the mechanism or party maintaining that relationship.
Bridges and wrapped assets →- Wrapped-asset redemption
The process for exchanging a representation for its underlying asset. It depends on the custody, accounting, verification and release rules; free transfer of the representation does not guarantee an available exit.
Bridges: a message, a verifier and a claim on another chain →