Every term, in plain English.

A public identifier for an account on a blockchain, usually a long hexadecimal string. Safe to share — it is what people send assets to. Knowing someone's address does not let you move their assets.

Tokens sent to wallets without the recipient asking. Sometimes a genuine distribution to existing holders; frequently bait leading to a phishing site.

A list of addresses permitted to mint before or instead of the general public. Formerly called a whitelist. Valuable when demand exceeds supply, and meaningless when it does not.

Permission granted to a contract to move tokens on your behalf. Required for marketplace listings, persists until revoked, and is the mechanism behind most NFT theft.

A storage network where you pay once for storage intended to be permanent. Used for NFT metadata and artwork as a durable alternative to ordinary web hosting.

Slang for the assets someone holds. "Holding bags" implies holding something that has fallen in value.

A shared, append-only ledger maintained by many independent computers, where no single party can alter past entries. The database NFTs live in.

A collection considered established enough to retain value through a downturn. A relative term, and one that proved less durable than it sounded.

Permanently destroying a token by sending it to an address nobody controls, or calling a burn function. The transaction history remains on-chain.

A wallet whose private keys are kept offline, usually on dedicated hardware. Used for holding assets rather than browsing.

A set of NFTs from the same contract, usually sharing a theme and trait system. What people mean by "a project".

The address where a smart contract is deployed. The only reliable way to verify a collection is genuine, since names and artwork are trivially copied.

Decentralised Autonomous Organisation. A group coordinating through token-based voting and a treasury held in a contract. In practice, governance participation is usually low and voting power concentrated.

Decentralised application. A front end that interacts with smart contracts rather than a company's server.

Slang for holding through volatility rather than selling. Framed as a virtue, and in practice indistinguishable from being unable to sell.

A multi-token standard where one contract manages both unique items and quantities of identical ones. More efficient for games, which need both.

The Ethereum standard for non-fungible tokens, where every token is unique and individually tracked. What most NFT collections use.

The blockchain where most NFT activity originated, and the first to support general-purpose smart contracts.

Ethereum Virtual Machine. The runtime that executes smart contracts. Chains that implement it — Polygon, Base, Arbitrum — can run the same contracts.

The lowest listed price in a collection. Widely quoted and frequently misleading, since a listing is not a sale — a floor with no trades behind it is a number someone typed.

Interchangeable. Any dollar is as good as any other dollar. NFTs are non-fungible: each one is distinct.

The fee paid to a network to process a transaction. Charged whether or not the transaction succeeds, which is how people lose money on failed mints.

Competition to get a transaction included during a popular mint, bidding gas prices up sharply. Usually a contest against automated bidders that a human loses while still paying.

Artwork produced by an algorithm, often with the output determined at mint time. One of the few categories where storing work fully on-chain is practical.

One billionth of an ETH. The unit gas prices are quoted in.

A wallet whose keys are stored on an internet-connected device. Convenient for browsing and exposed to anything that compromises that device.

InterPlanetary File System. Content-addressed distributed storage, where an address is derived from the content itself. The sensible default for NFT metadata.

A network that processes transactions off the main chain and settles to it, cutting costs by orders of magnitude. Base, Arbitrum, Optimism and Polygon are the main examples.

How readily an asset can be sold near its quoted price. The single most under-appreciated risk in NFTs, where most collections have very little of it.

The file describing a token — name, description, image link, traits. Usually stored off-chain, which is why where it lives determines whether the artwork survives.

Creating a new token by writing it onto a blockchain. Minting publishes the object; it does not create demand for it.

Non-fungible token. A unique entry in a public ledger recording which address controls a particular item.

A service that brings off-chain data onto a blockchain so contracts can act on it. The point at which a decentralised system acquires a centralised dependency.

Profile picture. A collection designed to be used as an avatar, typically thousands of algorithmically varied images. The dominant format of the 2021 boom.

The secret that authorises transactions from an address. Whoever has it controls the assets, permanently and without recourse.

A consensus mechanism where validators stake capital rather than expending computation. Ethereum's move to it cut its energy use by more than 99%.

How uncommon a token's traits are within its collection. Influences price within a collection, and says nothing about whether the collection itself is worth anything.

Twelve or twenty-four words from which every key in a wallet is derived. It is the wallet. Never type it into any website, for any reason.

The moment after a mint when artwork and traits become visible. Before reveal, buyers are purchasing an unknown item from the collection.

A percentage of secondary sales intended for the creator. Never enforced by the blockchain, made optional by several marketplaces, and frequently not paid.

A project that raises money on promises and then abandons them. The tell is usually anonymity plus heavy promises plus no verifiable track record.

Trading between collectors after the initial mint, as opposed to the primary sale from the creator.

A contract function granting an operator permission over every token you hold in a collection. Legitimate for marketplace listings, and the mechanism behind most NFT theft.

A program stored on a blockchain that runs identically for everyone and cannot be altered after deployment. Not smart, and not a contract.

A token permanently bound to one address and not transferable. Proposed for credentials, where sellability would defeat the purpose.

Buying multiple items from a collection at once, usually the cheapest listings. Sometimes used to move a floor price deliberately.

A parallel network using valueless tokens, used for testing before deploying to a live chain. Sepolia is the main Ethereum testnet.

The number identifying a specific token within its contract. Together with the contract address, it uniquely identifies any NFT.

Something a token does beyond existing — access, an in-game item, a credential. Distinguished from value resting purely on future resale.

Software or hardware holding the private keys that control your assets. Your NFTs are not in it — they are on the blockchain; the wallet holds the key to them.

Trading an asset between wallets you control to manufacture volume and price history. Makes a collection look active when it is not.

A proposed way of building applications where users hold their own accounts and assets rather than a company holding them. Part technical description, part marketing.

A holder large enough that their buying or selling moves the market. In thin NFT collections, this can be a single individual.