The vocabulary of on-chain markets, in plain English. Every term below is one you will meet reading prices, liquidity and volume across CoinVerum — each links to a deeper guide where one exists.
A smart-contract exchange that prices trades from a formula over a pool’s reserves instead of an order book. Every major DEX CoinVerum indexes is an AMM. Learn more →
Trading the same asset across venues to profit from price differences. Arbitrage is what keeps on-chain and off-chain prices aligned for liquid assets. Learn more →
A centralized exchange runs a private order book you must trust; a decentralized exchange runs on public smart contracts whose prices and reserves anyone can verify on-chain. Learn more →
A design (Uniswap V3/V4) where LPs place liquidity in a chosen price range for far greater capital efficiency, at the cost of active management and amplified impermanent loss. Learn more →
The x · y = k pricing rule used by Uniswap V2-style AMMs: the product of the two reserves stays constant, so price is their ratio and large trades move it. Learn more →
When a stablecoin loses its target value and trades meaningfully above or below it. On-chain pool skew is often the earliest warning sign. Learn more →
Current price multiplied by the total or maximum supply — the value if every token that will ever exist were already circulating. A large gap over market cap signals future dilution. Learn more →
Placing a transaction ahead of a known pending one — for example a bot buying a token before your large order to profit from the price move you will cause. Learn more →
Earning a protocol’s native token as a reward for providing liquidity — a way protocols bootstrap depth. Its yield is only as valuable as the reward token. Learn more →
A smart contract holding reserves of two or more tokens that traders swap against. Pool balances are the raw material of on-chain liquidity. Learn more →
A token minted to a liquidity provider that represents their proportional share of a pool and can be redeemed for the underlying reserves plus accrued fees. Learn more →
Value extracted by reordering, inserting or censoring transactions within a block. On DEXes it most often hits traders as sandwich attacks. Learn more →
How much your own trade moves a pool’s price, determined by trade size relative to pool depth. Big trades in shallow pools cause large impact. Learn more →
A scam where insiders drain a token’s liquidity or dump hidden supply, collapsing the price and leaving holders unable to sell. Most leave on-chain warning signs. Learn more →
The difference between the price you were quoted and the price you actually got, including price impact and any market movement between quote and execution. Learn more →
Spot price is the marginal price at the current reserves; execution price is the average price you actually get once your trade moves the curve. The gap is price impact. Learn more →
Ether packaged as an ERC-20 token so it can be used in smart contracts. 1 WETH is always redeemable for 1 ETH, and it is a core reference asset for on-chain pricing. Learn more →
Moving capital between DeFi protocols to maximise return, typically by supplying liquidity in exchange for swap fees plus token incentives. Learn more →