Glossary

The percentage change in an issuer's circulating supply over the past 30 days — a quick read on who is expanding or shrinking.

Bitcoin's share of the entire crypto market's total market cap, shown as a percentage — a gauge of whether capital favours BTC or altcoins.

The number of coins currently issued and available in the market; for a stablecoin pegged to $1, supply is roughly equal to market cap.

Data Availability (DA) is the guarantee that all transaction and state data in a blockchain network is publicly published and accessible. It ensures that any node can independently verify network transactions and rebuild the blockchain state, making it the core pillar of Web3 trust and security.

Financial services — lending, trading, staking — run by smart contracts on public blockchains, without banks or intermediaries.

The percentage of total stablecoin supply held by a single issuer such as Tether or Circle — a measure of market concentration.

A base blockchain that settles its own transactions, such as Ethereum, Solana, or Bitcoin.

A network built on top of a Layer 1 to process transactions faster and cheaper, settling back to the L1 for security (e.g. Base, Arbitrum).

A liquidity pool is a crowdsourced collection of cryptocurrencies or tokens locked in a smart contract. These pools provide the essential liquidity required for decentralized exchanges to facilitate trading, lending, and other financial activities without relying on centralized intermediaries. A liquidity pool eliminates the need for a direct counterparty to match every trade. Instead, it aggregates capital from various users into a smart contract, creating a reservoir of liquidity that traders can access at any time.

A token's price multiplied by its circulating supply — the total market value of all coins in circulation, used to rank assets by size.

In Web3, a node is simply an individual computer or server that connects to a blockchain network. Millions of these distributed computers communicate with each other to store data, validate transactions, and enforce the network's rules, replacing the need for a central authority like a bank. Common Types of Nodes - Full Nodes, Light Nodes, Validator Nodes (Mining/Staking), RPC (Remote Procedure Call) Nodes.

The fixed value a stablecoin aims to track (usually $1); de-pegging is when its market price drifts away from that target.

Permissioned means a blockchain or network requires authorization to join, read data, or transact. Unlike open, public networks, permissioned systems add a gatekeeping layer — run by a single operator or a consortium — so only vetted, approved participants can interact with the ledger. Access can be granted, scoped, or revoked: a participant might be allowed to read but not write, or be removed entirely. Because entry is controlled, identity is usually known rather than pseudonymous — participants verify who they are before gaining access, tying real-world identities to on-chain addresses.

Permissionless means anyone can use a network — transacting, building applications, or running infrastructure — without approval from a central authority, administrator, or gatekeeper. There's no account to register, no identity to verify, and no entity that can grant or revoke access. Participants are identified not by a name or government ID but by cryptographic addresses, making participation "pseudonymous" by default: anyone can generate an address and join without revealing who they are. Protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum run on open-source, public blockchains. Rules are enforced by mathematics and code rather than corporate policies.

Traditional financial assets — treasuries, stocks, ETFs, gold, private credit, real estate — issued as tokens onchain.

A crypto token designed to hold a steady value by pegging to an external asset — most often the US dollar, so one token is worth about $1.

In Web3, tokens are programmable digital assets built on a blockchain. They act as the foundational building blocks of the decentralized web, functioning as digital money, proof of ownership, or voting power.

The aggregate amount of capital users have deposited or staked into the smart contracts of a DeFi protocol, blockchain, or application.

The total value of a token traded on exchanges over the last 24 hours — a measure of liquidity and market activity.

Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are a cryptographic method used to prove knowledge about a piece of data, without revealing the data itself. An increasingly common way privacy is achieved on public blockchain networks is through zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs)—a method for one party to cryptographically prove to another that they possess knowledge about a piece of information without revealing the actual underlying information.