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Guides
Foundational guides for crypto literacy.
Token standards: what separates ERC-20 from ERC-721
Token standards on Ethereum and the basic distinction between them.
What decentralization is, and how you measure it
A network not depending on any single party, measured through its node and client distribution.
Are blockchain and Bitcoin the same thing
The relationship between a blockchain and Bitcoin, and why they are not the same thing.
What an all-time high is, and which price it is measured against
The highest recorded price of an asset, and how that price is calculated.
What scalability is, and what layer 2 inherits
Raising a network's transaction speed and capacity, and the layer 2 designs built for it.
What halving is, and who sets the rule
Bitcoin's block reward being cut in half every 210,000 blocks.
Public key and private key: which one you share
The private key and public key pair that make up a crypto account.
What is a blockchain, and what makes rewriting history hard?
An ordered sequence of blocks, each batching transactions and carrying the hash of the previous one.
What is an NFT, and what does the standard actually guarantee?
A standard interface defined in ERC-721 that tracks the ownership of distinguishable tokens separately.
What is a smart contract, and who controls it?
A program with code and state living at a specific address on chain, running as it was programmed.
What is a seed phrase, and what does it open?
A 12 or 24 word sequence defined in BIP-39 that represents a wallet's seed.
What is slippage, and how does it differ from price impact?
The price change that can occur between submitting a transaction and its inclusion in a block; the tolerance is the limit placed on that change.
What is proof of stake, and what does a validator put at risk?
A consensus method resting on a validator's deposited stake being destroyable if they act dishonestly.
What is slashing, and which validator actions trigger it?
Slashing destroys part of a validator's staked collateral and leads to a forced exit from the network.
What is an airdrop, and how does a snapshot work?
An airdrop distributes a project's tokens to selected addresses without a purchase price for those tokens.
What is minting, and why does ERC-721 not define how it works?
Minting creates a token or NFT that did not previously exist on-chain.
What is a rug pull, and what can on-chain evidence show?
The term describes a party behind a project taking funds from its pool or treasury and abandoning it.
What is a liquidity lock, and what does it actually prove?
A liquidity lock holds LP tokens in a contract that restricts their withdrawal until a specified time.
What are gas fees, and why do they change?
Gas is the unit of computational work required by a transaction; the fee is that amount multiplied by its price.
What is token approval, and why can it remain active?
An approval authorizes another address to spend a specified token from your wallet up to an allowance.
What is HODL, and where did it come from?
HODL is a term for holding rather than selling during price declines, originating in a typing mistake.