Web3 terminology
Web3 communities are usually filled with jargon and abbreviations that can be super confusing at first. Hopefully this page helps you get started in participating in these niche communities more quickly:
Airdrop - When a project sends you a token(s) for free at their own cost
Alpha - Early (usually unpublished/undocumented) information/news that's usually accessible only to a select group of individuals based on participation/membership tier
Anon - Refers to you, the reader (eg "Hi Anon"). Originates from individuals in crypto generally preferring to be anonymous for safety reasons
APR - Annual Percentage Rate - Percentage gains based on you staking tokens for a year and receiving interest continuously based on a reward tokens' emissions. You usually want to assess a contract's potential performance via this instead of its APY.
APY - Annual Percentage Yield - Percentage gains based on APR but assuming reinvestment of gains into the staked tokens. You usually want to assess a contract's performance via its APR and not this.
Bagholder - Usually used in a negative context to refer to someone who held a bag of tokens past it's pump
Blockchain - A databsae technology that allows for immutable and reproducible state and state transitions that serves as a digital ledger of transactions
Bridge - A set of contracts which allow for cross-chain asset transfer
Bridging - Term that Web3 communities use to refer to the act of bringing IRL value to its members via ownership of a project's tokens
CDC - Crypto Dot Com - A CEX
CEX - Centralised EXchange - Exchanges which abstract away chain interactions from users and provide an interface that's more familiar to TradFi traders
Coin - Native currency of a chain (eg $SOL on Solana, $ETH on Ethereum, $MATIC on Polygon, $CRO on Cronos)
Cold Wallet - A term that originally meant a wallet meant for long-term storage of digital assets but which is also loosely used when referring to hardware wallets
Custodial Wallet - A wallet assigned to you by CEXes so that you don't have to maintain your own seed phrase. Custodial Wallets are generally considered unsafe due to CEXes being able to halt transfers at any time. Also see Non-Custodial Wallets
dApps - Distributed Apps - The web-accessible interface which interacts with smart contracts via Metamask
DeFi - Decentralised Finance - Finance based on a distributed blockchain technology
DEX - Decentralised EXchange - these are exchanges which are a collection of contracts which have been deployed on a chain and made available to you via a website interface which you can use Metamask with
Diamond Hand - Refers to an individual who held tokens that mooned, often through massive dumps in price. Can also be used as a verb.
Dump - When the price of a token drops suddenly and drastically
ERC - Ethereum Request for Comment - A proposal for a standard that when approved becomes a function interface for a smart contract
ERC-20 - Most commonly seen interface for exchange-tradable fungible tokens
ERC-721 - A common interface for NFTs where there is only one copy of each token represented by a single digital asset
ERC-1155 - A common interface for NFTs that supports multiple copies of each token. Each token is represented by a single digital asset, but has multiple copies where each can be owned by different wallets
Etherscan - The most popular free tool used to view transactions on the Ethereum blockchain
EVM - Ethereum Virtual Machine - Usually seen when referring to a chain as "EVM-compatible" which means that code written for the Ethereum chain is also deployable on that chain
Fiat - TradFi Money
Fiat farming - Doing your day job
Frens - "Friends" but in crypto-speak
GM - Good Morning - Web3's collectively agreed upon way of saying "hello" - because it's always morning somewhere in the world and crypto is 24/7
GN - Good Night - Web3's collectively agreed upon way of saying "bye" - because it's always night somewhere in the world and crypto is 24/7
Hardware Wallet - A wallet where the seed phrase is stored on a separate device. Common choices for a hardware wallet are Ledger, Keystone, and Trezor.
Hodl - A misspelling of "hold" and now used to refer to buying a token and not selling it despite price falling
Hot Wallet - A term that originally referred to a wallet that is used for day-to-day transactions in crypto. Hot Wallets can be expected to be compromised sooner or later due to the many scams and malicious dApps that exist, to keep things SAFU, put your assets onto a Cold Wallet
LFG - Let's Fucking Go!
LP - Liquidity Pool - A type of contract that stores equivalent fiat values of two tokens which are designed for use by DEXes to perform token trades
Metamask - The most popular browser extension and app for accessing Web3 dApps
MM - Metamask (see Metamask)
Moon - When the price of a token pumps anywhere from 10-100x
NFT - Non-Fungible Token - A token belonging to a smart contract that implements either the ERC-721 or ERC-1155 standard
Non-Custodial Wallet - A wallet where you have full ownership of your seed phrase
NGMI - Not Gonna Make It - A phrase that Web3 communities use when it comes to dissing an individual's trading habits or a project's roadmap when they think it's bad
OpSec - Operational Security - Refers to personal security measures that individuals participating in Web3 take to stay SAFU from scammers
Proof of Reserves - CEXes way of proving to people that fiat money stored with them is SAFU. Gained popularity after the fall of the FTX CEX
Pump - When the price of a token goes up suddenly and drastically
PND - Pump and Dump - A common scam involving a scammer creating a token, creating lots of hype around it to pump the price, and then liquidating the "team's allocation", resulting in a dump
Roadmap - Basically the project's investor pitch to investors. Usually a set of milestones and deliverables defined by the team which have rewards at every milestone to acquire early investors
SAFU - "Safe" but in crypto-speak
Shitcoin - Loosely used to refer to any token that doesn't meet an investor's expectation or have any utility
Skem - "Scam" but in crypto-speak
Smart contract - A program written for deployment onto a blockchain (eg. Solidity for Ethereum, Move for Aptos)
Solidity - A programming language used for writing smart contracts on EVM-compatible blockchains
Staking - Storing your tokens with a project in return for a guaranteed APR on a project's "reward" token
Touching Grass - Going out to participate in IRL activities instead of Discord/Telegram/Twitter
TradFi - Traditional Finance - The IRL money system
Utility - Refers to things you can do with a token. Generally over-promised and under-delivered by project teams
VC - Voice Chat - Refers to the voice chat in a Discord server. Usually seen as "Join VC now"
WAGMI - We Are Gonna Make It - A phrase that Web3 communities use as a rallying cry in the hope that the bull market comes again
Web3 - Web 3.0 - The internet with identity proof and digital asset ownership mechanisms baked in
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