The NFT Bible
All the NFT Terminology You Need to Know
The NFT community utilizes a huge number of acronyms, abbreviations and community specific terms. Here is all the NFT terminology you need to know.
| AB | ArtBlocks, a platform dedicated to generative, decentralized art. |
| Alpha | The outperformance or underperformance of a portfolio of investments resulting from the skill of an asset manager vs the market's performance, otherwise known as the Beta. |
| Blockchain | A system in which a record of transactions made in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency are maintained across several computers that are linked in a peer-to-peer network. |
| Burn | Tokens are permanently removed from the circulation. Burning large amounts of cryptocurrency tokens can have the effect of increasing the scarcity of that token. |
| Coinbase | An American company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. |
| Consensus mechanism | Used to confirm the state of a network by reaching a common agreement between nodes. |
| CT | Crypto Twitter, a subset of Twitter users that use the platform exclusively to discuss crypto-currencies. |
| DAO | Decentralized Autonomous Organization. Code that runs by itself when certain rules are met. |
| DeFi | Decentralized finance, a generalized term referring to decentralized financial services on the blockchain. |
| DEX | Decentralized exchange, a peer-to-peer network that connects crypto buyers and sellers. |
| Discord | Discord is a VoIP, instant messaging and digital distribution platform designed for creating communities. NFT communities typically communicate on Discord servers. |
| Drop | The date when an NFT becomes available for purchase. |
| DYOR | Do Your Own Research. |
| EIP | Ethereum Improvement Proposal. EIPs describe standards for the Ethereum platform. |
| ERC | Ethereum Request for Comment. Technical notes about the Ethereum platform and requirements to specific groups of developers and users. |
| ETH | Ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network. |
| Ethereum | A decentralized open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. |
| Floor price | The lowest available asking price on OpenSea/Larvalabs etc either for a collection as a whole or for a subset of the collection. |
| FOMO | Fear of missing out. |
| Fren | Friend. |
| FUD | Fear, uncertainty and doubt. |
| Gas fee | The fee paid to miners for the work required to validate a transaction on the blockchain. |
| Gas wars | When demand drives dramatic increases in gas prices. |
| Generative art | Art that is algorithmically generated. |
| GM | Good morning |
| GMI | Gonna make it |
| GN | Good night |
| GOAT | Greatest of all time |
| Governance tokens | Voting rights held by members within a specific ecosystem, e.g. a DAO |
| HODL | Hold on for dear life, a phrase used to express fear in volatile markets, typically in a downturn. |
| IRL | In real life, as opposed to NFT communities and marketplaces. |
| JPG | An image file type, generally used to joke about when other people say you have just bought a JPG when you have bought an NFT. |
| Liquidity | Available ETH to buy JPGs. |
| LL | Larvalabs, the creators of punks. |
| Metaverse | A virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the internet. |
| Mint | The act of initially issuing a piece of art on the blockchain, either by the artist of the creator. |
| NFA | Not financial advise. |
| NFT | Non-fungible-token, a term used to describe digital assets that have an authentication marker stored on a blockchain to demonstrate their originality. |
| NGMI | Not going to make it, a term typically used to point out trading efforts that result in negative outcomes. |
| NOOB | A person who is inexperienced in a particular sphere or activity. |
| Off-chain | Something that happens in real life and then needs to be reported to the blockchain. |
| OG | Original gangster, a person that deserves respect due to their longstanding contribution to the NFT community. |
| On-chain | A transaction that happens on the blockchain. |
| OpenSea | A peer-to-peer marketplace for NFTs, rare digital items and crypto collectibles. |
| P2P | Peer-to-peer, computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. |
| Permissionless | Blockchains that do not require approval before joining. |
| PFP | Profile picture. |
| Probably nothing | Ironically means probably something. |
| Ser | Sir, a term of respect. |
| Shill | Promoting a project in a tactless manner. |
| Snz | Abbreviation of seasons, referring to the market cycle. |
| Swap | Swapping one token or coin for another, usually via a decentralized exchange. |
| Sweep the floor | Buying up the lowest priced NFTs within a collection to increase the floor price. |
| Trustless | A trustless system means that the participants involved do not need to know or trust each other or a third party for the system to function. |
| A microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as tweets. NFTs are regularly hyped via this medium and there is a subset of Twitter users that only use the platform to discuss cryptocurrency. This is called Crypto-Twitter (CT). | |
| Up only | A term to express the desire for ever increasing NFT prices. |
| WAGMI | We all gonna make it, a phrase used between fellow traders to express optimism once a specific asset starts performing well. |
| Wallet | A cryptocurrency wallet is a device, physical medium, program or a service which stores the public and/or private keys for cryptocurrency transactions. In addition to this basic function of storing the keys, a cryptocurrency wallet more often also offers the functionality of encrypting and/or signing information. |