Mining and crypto glossary
Last updated: 23 July 2026
Every mining and crypto term used across this site, defined in plain English, sorted A to Z, and each one on its own linkable page.
#
A
- Address Your public receiving identity on a blockchain.
- Algorithm The specific proof-of-work function a coin is mined with.
- Altcoin Any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin.
- Alephium (ALPH) A sharded proof-of-work chain, GPU-mined.
- ASIC A chip built to mine one algorithm, extremely fast at it.
- Airdrop Free tokens distributed to wallets, often for marketing.
B
- Block A batch of transactions added to the blockchain.
- Block Reward What a found block pays: subsidy plus fees.
- Block Time The average gap between blocks.
- Block Explorer A public website for browsing a blockchain.
- Blockchain A shared, append-only ledger secured by consensus.
- BlockDAG A blockchain structure that allows parallel blocks.
- Block Header The small fixed part of a block that mining hashes.
- Block Height How many blocks came before a given block.
- Block Size How much transaction data a block carries.
- Bitcoin (BTC) The first cryptocurrency, mined with SHA-256 on ASICs.
- Bear Market A sustained period of falling prices.
- Bull Market A sustained period of rising prices.
- BIP A Bitcoin Improvement Proposal: how Bitcoin changes are designed.
- Bid-Ask Spread The gap between the best buy and sell prices.
C
- Coinbase Transaction The first transaction in a block, which pays the reward.
- Cold Wallet A wallet kept offline for safekeeping.
- Confirmation A later block that makes a transaction harder to reverse.
- Consensus Mechanism How a network agrees on one version of history.
- CPU A general-purpose processor, rarely efficient for mining.
- Cryptocurrency Digital money secured by cryptography on a blockchain.
- Cryptography The maths that secures keys, signatures and hashes.
- Custody Who holds the keys to your coins.
- Cuckaroo29 A memory-bound, graph-based proof-of-work.
- Conflux (CFX) A Tree-Graph chain with a GPU proof-of-work component.
- Crypto Winter An extended market downturn across the whole sector.
- Cloud Mining Paying a company to mine for you. High scam risk.
- Coin A cryptocurrency native to its own blockchain.
- Cross-Chain Bridge A system moving value between blockchains.
D
- Difficulty How hard it currently is to find a block.
- Double Spending Trying to spend the same coins twice.
- DeFi Financial services built on public blockchains.
- DAO An organization governed by on-chain rules and votes.
- Difficulty Adjustment The chain retuning itself to keep block time steady.
- Dogecoin (DOGE) A Scrypt coin with no fixed supply cap.
- DAG A graph structure with no cycles; in crypto, chains that allow parallel blocks.
- DApp An application whose backend runs on a blockchain.
- Decentralization Spreading control so no single party decides.
- DEX An exchange that runs as a smart contract, no custodian.
- DYOR Do Your Own Research: verify before you commit money.
- Digital Signature Cryptographic proof that the key owner authorized a message.
E
- Effort A luck meter comparing work spent to work expected.
- Encryption Scrambling data so only the intended party can read it.
- Epoch A fixed span of blocks a chain treats as one period.
- EtcHash The GPU algorithm securing Ethereum Classic.
- Ethereum Classic (ETC) A major GPU proof-of-work coin using EtcHash.
- Exchange A marketplace for buying and selling cryptocurrencies.
- ETF A stock-market fund that tracks an asset, including crypto.
- EVM Ethereum's smart-contract engine, copied by many chains.
- Eclipse Attack Isolating a node so it only sees an attacker's network view.
- EIP An Ethereum Improvement Proposal; EIPs define ERC token standards.
- Efficiency Work done per watt, the number that decides profit.
F
- FPGA A reconfigurable chip between a GPU and an ASIC.
- Fee A charge for a service, such as the pool or a transaction.
- Fork A split or upgrade in a blockchain's rules.
- FPPS Full pay per share: subsidy and fees paid per share.
- Fractal Bitcoin (FB) A Bitcoin scaling chain merge-mined with Bitcoin.
- Fiat Currency Government-issued money like dollars, euros or lira.
- Firmware The software built into a piece of hardware.
G
H
- Hot Wallet A wallet connected to the internet for everyday use.
- Halving A scheduled cut to a coin's block subsidy.
- Hash A fixed-size fingerprint of any data.
- Hashrate How much mining work your hardware does per second.
- Hardware Wallet A physical device that stores your keys offline.
- Hard Fork A rule change old software refuses to accept.
- Hashprice What one unit of hashrate earns per day.
- HODL Holding coins long-term instead of selling.
I
K
L
- Latency The round-trip delay between your rig and the pool.
- Luck How a pool's real block finding compares to expected.
- Liquidity How much can be traded without moving the price.
- Listing An exchange adding a coin for trading (delisting removes it).
- Layer 2 (L2) A network built on top of a blockchain to scale it.
- Lightning Network Bitcoin's payment-channel layer for instant small payments.
M
- Mainnet A blockchain's live, real-value network.
- Mempool The waiting room of unconfirmed transactions.
- Merged Mining Securing two chains with the same work at once.
- Merkle Tree A hash structure that summarises many transactions.
- Mining Doing the work that produces blocks and earns coins.
- Mining Farm A facility running many mining rigs at scale.
- Mining Pool Miners combining hashrate to earn steadier rewards.
- Market Capitalization A coin's price times its circulating supply.
- MEV Value extracted by choosing what order transactions go in.
- Mining Software The program that does the hashing and talks to the pool.
- modelOS (MDL) A coin once merge-mined with Pearl; its network has shut down.
- Monero (XMR) A privacy coin mined with CPU-friendly RandomX.
- Masternode A collateral-backed server earning a share of block rewards.
- Malware Malicious software; cryptojackers mine on victims' machines.
- Mining Rig One machine built to run mining hardware.
N
O
- Orphan Block A valid block that lost the race and pays nothing.
- Open Source Software whose code is public to read, audit and fork.
- On-Chain Recorded on the blockchain itself, publicly verifiable.
- Off-Chain Activity outside the blockchain: fast, but trust-based.
- Overclocking Running hardware faster than its stock settings.
P
- Paper Wallet Keys printed or written on paper for offline storage.
- Peer-to-Peer (P2P) A network where participants connect directly.
- Phishing A scam that tricks you into revealing keys or logins.
- Private Key The secret that lets you spend your coins.
- Public Key The shareable counterpart to your private key.
- Proof of Work (PoW) Securing a chain by requiring real computation.
- Proof of Stake (PoS) Securing a chain with locked coins instead of work.
- Proof of Useful Work (PoUW) Pearl's consensus: real computation, proven correct.
- PPS and PPS+ Pay-per-share payout schemes.
- PPLNS Pay per last N shares, a round-based payout scheme.
- Proxy Pool Software that fronts many miners as one connection.
- Pearl (PRL) A GPU-mined Proof of Useful Work coin.
- Premine Coins created for insiders before public mining starts.
- PSU The power supply, and the part most often undersized.
- Payback Period How long hardware takes to earn back its price.
Q
R
S
- Seed Phrase A word list that backs up your whole wallet.
- Share A verifiable unit of mining work you submit.
- Share Difficulty A per-rig target that paces your share submissions.
- Smart Contract Code that runs on a blockchain automatically.
- SSL / TLS Encryption for a secure connection to the pool.
- Stablecoin A coin designed to hold a steady value.
- Stale Share A share that arrived too late to count.
- Stratum The protocol miners use to talk to a pool.
- Subsidy The newly issued coins a block creates.
- Sharding Splitting a chain into parallel pieces to scale it.
- Solo Mining Mining for whole blocks instead of a shared reward.
- Scrypt A memory-hard algorithm used by Dogecoin and others.
- SHA-256 The hashing algorithm that secures Bitcoin.
- Satoshi (sat) The smallest unit of Bitcoin: 1/100,000,000 BTC.
- Satoshi Nakamoto Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator.
- Sidechain A separate chain pegged to a main chain's asset.
- Staking Pool Pooled coins earning proof-of-stake rewards together.
T
- Testnet A practice network with valueless coins.
- Token A digital asset issued on top of a blockchain.
- Tokenomics The economics of a coin's supply and incentives.
- Transaction A transfer of coins recorded on the blockchain.
- Transaction Fee A small fee paid to get a transaction confirmed.
- Tari (XTM) A digital-assets protocol that merge-mines with Monero.
U
V
W
X
Z
Ready to put this into practice?
The How to Mine guide picks your closest server and builds your exact miner command.