The ultimate glossary of crypto & NFT terms

What do NFT, HODL, FUD, LFG, DAOs, and DEFI all mean? 

Yes we agree, diving into NFTs and Crypto can be very, very, intimidating. We get that.

The terminology seems like they it’s from another language. But fear not.

We have a growing list of NFT glossary terms to keep you in the know, in the loop, and feeling less intimidated in a few short minutes.

The last NFT glossary you will ever need

FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Can be used as a noun, "that post about NFTs being dead is FUD" or a verb, "They are just fudding their bags so they can sell later on."

Bullish vs Bearish: there are a few theories on why bullish and bearish exist, but the consensus is based on the attacking actions. A attacks by slashing down with its claws while a attacks by ramming its horns in an upward motion. Therefore: bullish up, bearish down.

Rug Pull: when a team pulls the rug out from underneath the project; typically by disappearing and taking all of the money.

Your Bags: what you hold in your wallet, especially when your NFTs or tokens are becoming less and less valuable (tanking). Used in a sentence, "wow their bags are full of rug pulls."

Down Bad: when your bags (see definition above) are becoming more and more worthless by the day. Or they have fully gone to 0 in a flash. That's down bad.

HODL: a double entendre. A drunken post from 2013 famously titled I AM HODLING discussed holding onto BTC forever and never selling. It is also an acronym meaning "Holding On for Dear Life".

Sweep: When someone buys multiple NFTs from the same project in one fell swoop.

Whale: a successful degen or institution who seemingly has endless funds to trade or invest. Whales can affect an NFT project's floor with one big sweep.

Exit Liquidity: this is what the 's want from us. They purposely pump the price of an NFT or send out a series of bullishtweets saying buy! buy! buy! so they can sell to us. This allows them to get ETH from you and then exit the market (hence exit liquidity).

LFG: Literally means Let's F$*%ing Go! Typically shows excitement for floor price increases or projects going to the moon . It was recently made famous by our fellow

To the Moon or Mooning: When an NFT does so well - with an increase in price or in sales or in community growth - that it leaves the stratosphere and goes towards the moon. Whether or not it ever actually hits the moon is always up for debate.

Pico Top: The top of the top of the top. Typically used when someone buys the top and sells the bottom, "I can't believe they bought that pico top Mekaverse for 10ETH and sold for .4ETH, down bad.“

Diamond Hands: When a holder refuses to sell no. matter. what. They are going to hold their NFT forever, even if the price goes to 0. Was made famous during the $GME + r/wallstreetbets craze of 2021.

Paper Hands: Someone who quickly sells their NFT/crypto/tokens at the earliest signs of FUD. The exact opposite of Diamond Hands.

Cope: How the NFT Community handles tough times. They cope. We cope. We come up with ways to deal effectively with something difficult. That's cope.

Airdrop: The distribution of NFTs or tokens to a users wallet, typically without warning and always for free (except for the tax burden ). They can range from scammy pump and dumps to the most valuable companion NFTs to large projects.

DAO: An acronym for "decentralized autonomous organization", a DAO describes a blockchain built community which often deals in governance and decision making. Much of web3 media and economics are driven by these DAOs

DeFi or 'decentralized finance' is simply the concept of capital independent from 'central' systems such as banks and governments. Many use the words crypto and DeFi interchangeably, though one describes a currency, and the other an ideology or philosophy.

Touching Grass: a mental health recommendation from the NFT community to step away from the screens and spend some time outdoors. Also refers to a concept called "earthing" where humans get anxiety relief from being barefoot on solid earth.

Hot wallet vs cold wallet: put simply, hot wallets are connected to the internet in an online environment while cold wallets store information in an offline environment. Most importantly, cold wallets are safer than hot wallets.

Hot Wallet - @MetaMask
Cold Wallet - @Ledger

NFT Roadmap: The plans an NFT project puts together to provide value in the upcoming days, weeks, months, and years. Many use the roadmap visual style like Bored Ape Yacht Club and Cool Cats below. The roadmap often includes IRL meetups, avatars, games, metaverses, giveaways, and more.

Rarity: NFT rarity rankings measure how rare an NFT is in a collection. Since each NFT has a different combination of traits, each one is unique, and therefore some are more unique than others. What's the rarest in your collection?

Seed Phrase vs Password: Put it this way, it's a lot easier on the soul to lose a password. A seed phrase is essentially a password that cannot be retrieved by any customer service team in the world if you lose it. And of course, never write your seed phrase down digitally, paper only.

Public key vs private key: public and private keys are like partners in security - in that they work with each other. A public key (like its name suggests) is freely shared, and used for encryption purposes.

A private key is something only you should have, and is what actually decrypts the information itself. We can think of it like the public key being a safe, and the private key being the code to open it for its contents.

1 of 1: An NFT that is solely unique. It is not a part of any set and it does not have anything else like it. It's 1 NFT out of a set of 1. For many folks in the NFT space, the 1 of 1 NFT - Everydays: the First 5000 Days — by @beeple was the first time they heard about NFTs.

Smart Contracts: From the Ethereum Organization, "A 'smart contract' is simply a program that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. It's a collection of code (its functions) and data (its state) that resides at a specific address on the Ethereum blockchain."

https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/smart-contracts/

Fractionalized NFTs: refers to a group of fungible tokens associated with a fraction of their parent NFT (like 1 Doodle) or of their group of NFTs (all CryptoPunks). They are more affordable since one can own a proportional share of a collection instead of buying the entire NFT.

NFT mint: to mint an NFT is to essentially convert your piece of media to an item on the blockchain. It also describes being the first to claim an NFT from a collection.

Pre mint: also described as a presale or reserve spot, a “premint” allocation allows users to access an early and oftentimes cheaper mint. This was initially invented to battle the gas wars!

NFA: Not Financial Advice. Degens use this to ensure you (but more importantly the SEC) do not regard their post as legal financial advice. They usually are giving financial advice and only financial advice, but don't tell them we said that. Also, this is NFA.

Alpha: in NFTs it's either an investment strategy to beat the market or a piece of information that will make you a better/smarter member of the NFT ecosystem. Look out for "wen alpha?", "who has alpha?", or even "alpha groups" to potentially find some alpha in the wild.

Blue Chip: Another community NFT term to mean a collection that has a great reputation, and very steady success. People’s opinions on which NFTs can be considered a “Blue Chip” differ, but most agree on a few such as Cool Cats, CloneX, and Doodles.

Fiat: regular, schmegular money. Basically: not crypto. Fiat is is just a word for legal and regulated tender.

Derivative: another word for a “remix” if you will, based on and with heavy influence of another predecessor collection. Many consider Mutant Ape Yacht Club a derivative of Bored Ape Yacht Club!

Bot: who wrote this post lol jk. Bots are automated computer programs designed to run tasks with minimal human intervention. Examples include: most users commenting on this tweet, who beat you to a trade during the last mint, and whomever convinced you to buy your last NFT.

DEX: A decentralized exchange. It is a marketplace with user to user or peer to peer trades. It is for trading crypto in a non-custodial way and without a middleperson. It is the decentralized version of CEX (centralized exchange). Examples include Uniswap, Sushiswap, Bancor, and 1inch.

Devs: the most important people in crypto and the people who need to do something! Devs is short for developers and is also known as a programmer, coder or software engineer. They are IT professionals who use programming languages to create computer software.

Etherscan: Feeling nosey? Etherscan’s got your back! Etherscan lets you browse all transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, and is essentially the database for our receipts. 

Flip: What many of us degens aspire to do when we wake up in the morning - but often fail. To “flip” an NFT is to sell for profit. “But isn’t that the point?!” You may ask. Yes, yes it is.

Collectible: refers to a unique piece of digital art that holds an intrinsic value and that you want to collect. Kind of like baseball cards or Pokemon cards except EVEN BETTER.

Drop: means releasing a hot new NFT to the good people in NFT land. Common phrases include, "Wen drop?", "what a sick drop", and "wow that drop went so smoothly."

Gas: or the gas fee is what you pay to successfully make transaction on the blockchain. The gas fee is charged every time you make a change to the Ethereum network so it can be when you buy an NFT, send ETH, or create a smart contract.

IPFS: or Interplanetary File System (IPFS) is a peer-to-peer file-sharing network. With IPFS, the data can be found as long as the address is hosted by someone in the decentralized P2P network. Fun fact: it is how many of your favorite NFTs are stored online 🤔

KYC: Know Your Customer. This is why the blockchain companies ask you to fill in lengthy forms where they ask for your name and other personal info. It is to comply with the KYC regulations. And yes, everyone else sees KFC first whenever they read KYC.

Metadata: is the data that gives information for other data. And if that didn't help whatsoever, with NFTs it is where you can find their name, description, traits, and anything else that makes the NFT unique. Also, Metadata can be on-chain or off-chain.