General Glossary
Short explainers on all generic terms used within this documentation.
AMM
Automated Market Maker, Smart Contract based Market Maker. Usually the model used to provide liquidity to Decentralized Exchanges.
APY
Annual Percentage Yield. See: Yield.
Audit
A review of software safety and quality, usually done by a third party.
Bug Bounty
A bounty, often paid in cash, reserved for participants and white-hat hackers who find bugs in software.
Capital Aggregator
Entity that aggregates capital from multiple users. Examples include: Wallet services, Exchanges and Mobile Crypto Applications.
Collateral Ratio
Percentage of backing of a loan. If $1 worth of ETH is deposited and $0.5 USDC can be borrowed in return: The Collateral Ratio is 2. ($1/$0.5)
Compounding (To compound, verb)
Crediting interest to the existing principal. Compounding in DeFi mostly refers to converting Governance Tokens to stablecoins or Ether and depositing the freshly acquired assets back into a DeFi Protocol.
DAI
Decentralized Stablecoin, overcollateralized and issued by DeFi Protocol MakerDAO.
DAO
Decentralized Autonomous Organization, entity that manages a DeFi Protocol controlled by organization members.
Decentralized
An entity or construct that is not governed by a central entity. For simplicity's sake: A "bank" is centralized, a crypto wallet is not.
DeFi
Decentralized Finance, a collection of a Financial Ecosystem where no Central Entity is present to govern.
DEX
Decentralized Exchange, a type of cryptocurrency exchange which allows for direct peer-to-peer cryptocurrency transactions to take place online securely and without the need for an intermediary.
Diversification
The art of spreading risk across multiple assets or locations.
ERC20 Token
The Smart Contract Token Standard on the Ethereum Blockchain.
ETH
Ethereum.
EVM
Ethereum Virtual Machine, Smart Contract Blockchain Environment. The "computer" that runs DeFi.
Gas Costs
The costs associated with submitting a transaction to the Ethereum Blockchain.
KPI
Key Performance Indicator, an indicator that can be used to measure performance of an individual or company/team.
LBP
Liquidity Bootstrapping Event, fair launch sale process introduced by Balancer.
Leverage
Borrowing money in order to increase exposure to a certain investment.
Liquidity
Definition of assets available for trading against, such as assets held by counter parties.
Liquidity Provision
Offering the option, but not the obligation for other market participants to transact X for Y with you.
Middleware
Software that sits between the backend and the frontend. Middleware is easily understood as software that the user does not notice is being used.
Non-Fungible Token
A token which is a "one-off", usually comes with an attached picture or graphic design.
Non-Custodial
Holding funds in a location without that location being held by a (central) party.
Performance Fees
Fees paid over positive performance, "fees over profit, and profit only".
Portfolio
Your personal holdings.
PreDAO
The DAO consisting out of preDAO members, joining development prior to Token Launch.
Proprietary
In-house developed.
Protocol
Autonomous "software" on the blockchain.
Protocol Generated Revenue
Revenue generated by a DeFi Protocol.
Risk Appetite
The willingness to take risk, someone trading high leverage has a high appetite for risk.
SDK
Software Development Kit, well-documented and easy way to integrate middleware in existing software solutions. More information about the Spool SDK can be found here.
Secondary Market
Market where investors exchange assets with other investors.
Smart Contract
Program or set of rules executed on the blockchain without counterparty risk.
Speculation
The act of taking risk in the assumption that your view of the market comes to fruition. "He is speculating on the price of Bitcoin by buying BTC."
Stablecoin
Crypto Token that represents one United States Dollar in value.
Swaps
Decentralized "trade": "Swapping ETH for USDC on Uniswap".
Token
Virtual (Crypto) currency, issued by a DAO or company.
Treasury
Available funds of a DAO, in the context of this documentation.
TVL
Total Value Locked, The current value locked in a DeFi Protocol denominated in USD.
TVR
Total Value Routed, since Spool "Routes" deposits to different Yield Generators the term TVR is most fitting when describing the total amount of deposits in the Spool Ecosystem.
UI
User Interface, most often refers to a website.
USDC
Fiat backed stablecoin issued by Circle.
Vault
In DeFi refers to a Smart Contract containing assets with the intent to generate "Yield".
Wallet
Device, physical medium or software that stores the private key to your blockchain wallet address.
Web3
Common definition for an upgraded internet based on decentralized infrastructure.
Yield
Return on an investment over a set period of time. 10% annual percentage yield refers to receiving 10% of your collateral in profits over the course of a year.
Yield Farming
The act of engaging with DeFi Protocols in order to obtain the aforementioned yield.
A DeFi protocol where users can participate with the intent to generate yield.
Yield Optimizer
DeFi protocols that aims to optimize yield generation for its users.
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