Glossary

The language of the capital stack.

Plain-language definitions for the technical, economic, market-structure, and risk terms used throughout the research journal.

Attestation: A practitioner’s conclusion about specified information under a defined procedure and date. It is not automatically a full financial-statement audit.
Bridge: A system that transfers messages or representations of assets between networks, adding verification, custody, liquidity, and upgrade assumptions.
Circulating supply: The amount of a token considered available to the market under a stated methodology; definitions can differ across issuers and data providers.
Collateral factor: A risk parameter that limits how much can be borrowed against an asset relative to its value.
Composability: The ability for applications and assets to interact as building blocks, which can improve utility while transmitting dependency risk.
Consensus: The process by which network participants agree on valid state and transaction ordering.
Custody: The controls, technology, legal relationships, and operations used to hold and transfer assets or the keys that control them.
Data availability: Assurance that the data needed to verify or reconstruct a blockchain or rollup state can be accessed.
Depeg: A sustained or material deviation of a stable asset from its reference value.
Dilution: A reduction in an owner’s relative share caused by new token issuance, equity issuance, options, warrants, or other claims.
Finality: The point at which a transaction is considered irreversible under a network’s security assumptions.
Fully diluted valuation: Token price multiplied by a stated future or maximum supply. It is not cash value and does not account for liquidity or selling impact.
Governance token: A token used to signal, vote, delegate, or control protocol parameters; practical power depends on concentration and implementation authority.
Liquid staking token: A transferable token or accounting claim linked to staked assets and rewards, adding smart-contract, liquidity, provider, and redemption risk.
Liquidity: The ability to transact an amount within a time window at an acceptable price and settlement outcome.
Maximal extractable value: Value that can be captured by ordering, including, or excluding transactions within a block or related execution process.
Multisignature wallet: A wallet requiring a defined threshold of multiple keys to authorize a transaction.
Oracle: A mechanism that supplies external or cross-market data to a smart contract.
Proof of reserves: Evidence intended to show control of selected assets at a point in time; it may not establish liabilities, ownership, encumbrances, or solvency.
Proof of stake: A consensus family in which validators commit stake and may receive rewards or penalties based on protocol rules.
Real-world asset tokenization: The use of digital tokens to represent a legal claim, record, entitlement, or operational interest connected to an off-chain asset.
Redemption: The process of exchanging a token or fund interest for an underlying asset, cash, or another claim under defined eligibility and settlement terms.
Rollup: A scaling system that executes or batches transactions away from a base layer while posting data or proofs used for verification and settlement.
Sequencer: An operator or system that orders transactions for a rollup or application environment.
Slashing: A proof-of-stake penalty that can reduce committed assets after specified validator behavior or failure.
Smart contract: Code deployed to a blockchain that executes defined state changes under network and contract rules.
Stablecoin: A token designed to track a reference asset or unit through reserves, collateral, market incentives, redemption, or a combination of mechanisms.
Tokenomics: The supply, distribution, incentives, demand, rights, governance, and value-flow design associated with a token.
Total value locked: A measure of assets deposited in one or more protocols. It can double count assets and does not by itself represent revenue or exit liquidity.
Validator: A participant or service that helps verify, propose, attest to, or finalize network state under a protocol’s rules.
Vesting: A schedule or condition that determines when equity, tokens, options, or other rights become earned or transferable.
Value capture: The mechanism through which economic activity improves the rights, cash flows, scarcity, utility, or strategic position of a specific instrument.