Jargon

Address contract address, CA  -  A long string of letters and numbers identifying a wallet or a specific coin. Names can be copied. Addresses cannot. Always arrive at a coin by its address.

Aggregator Jupiter  -  Software that checks every DEX at once and routes your trade through the best price.

Ape  -  To buy fast without much research. Usually said with affection, occasionally with regret.

Approve sign  -  Confirming a transaction in your wallet popup. Nothing moves until you approve it.

Ath all time high  -  The highest price it has ever reached.

Bag  -  The coins you currently hold. A bagholder is someone still holding after the price died.

Candle  -  One bar on a chart. Shows the open, high, low and close price for that slice of time.

Degen  -  Someone who trades extremely risky things on purpose. Worn as a badge.

DEX decentralised exchange  -  An exchange that is just code. No account, no signup, you trade straight from your wallet.

Diamond hands  -  Holding through big drops. The opposite is paper hands, selling at the first scare.

Drainer  -  A malicious site that gets you to sign something which empties your wallet. If a popup appears when you did not click anything, reject it.

FDV fully diluted value  -  Market cap if every coin that will ever exist already existed. If FDV is far above market cap, a lot of coins are still waiting to hit the market.

Fud  -  Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Sometimes genuine criticism relabelled to dismiss it.

Gas network fee  -  The tiny fee for putting a transaction on the network. On Solana, a fraction of a cent.

Holders  -  How many separate wallets own the coin. A few dozen holders means a handful of people decide the price.

Honeypot  -  A coin you can buy but cannot sell. The code blocks selling.

Insider bundled  -  Wallets connected to the creator that bought at launch, ready to sell into buyers.

Liquidity  -  The pool of money you sell back into. Thin liquidity means you cannot get out cleanly. Probably the single most important number on the page. Check it before you buy.

Market cap mcap  -  Price of one coin multiplied by how many coins exist. How big the whole thing is. The only size number worth comparing between coins. Price alone tells you nothing.

Moon  -  To go up enormously. Nobody says it about a 4% gain.

NGMI / WAGMI  -  Not gonna make it, and we're all gonna make it. Used as insult and encouragement.

Rug rug pull  -  The creator sells everything at once, or pulls the liquidity. Price goes to zero instantly. Check holder concentration first. A team holding a big share is the warning sign.

Seed phrase recovery phrase  -  Twelve words that ARE your wallet. Anyone with them owns everything in it. Paper only. Never a photo, never typed into a website, never sent to anyone.

Self custody non custodial  -  You hold your own keys. Nobody can freeze your funds, and nobody can recover them either.

Send it  -  Do the trade. Stop deliberating.

Slippage  -  The gap between the price you saw and the price you actually got. Bigger trade into a smaller pool means worse slippage. It is not a fee, it is physics.

Sniper  -  A bot that buys the instant a coin launches, before any human can. Part of why a coin can be up hundreds of percent before you have heard of it.

SOL  -  The currency of the Solana network. You buy coins with it and pay fees in it. Always leave a little spare. With a zero balance you cannot even sell.

Stablecoin USDC, USDT  -  A coin designed to always be worth one dollar. Used for sitting still.

Supply  -  How many coins exist. Picked arbitrarily by whoever made it.

Swap  -  Trading one coin directly for another. Every buy and sell here is a swap.

Volume  -  How much was traded in a period, in dollars. High volume means lots of activity. Can be faked by bots trading with themselves. Treat it as a hint, not proof.

Wallet  -  An app holding the key that proves your coins are yours. Not an account with a company.

Wash trading  -  Trading with yourself to fake volume and make a coin look busy.