Crypto security has its own vocabulary. This glossary explains every term you need to understand when evaluating token safety. Terms link to detailed guides where available.
A
Airdrop scam — Malicious tokens sent to your wallet without your consent. Interacting with them (selling, visiting linked websites) can trigger wallet drain mechanisms through hidden approvals.
AMM (Automated Market Maker) — A smart contract that enables decentralized trading through liquidity pools instead of order books. Examples: Uniswap, Raydium, PancakeSwap.
Approval (Token Approval) — Permission you grant to a smart contract to spend your tokens. Unlimited approvals let contracts drain your entire balance. See Token Approval Exploits.
B
Backdoor — A hidden function in a smart contract that gives the creator secret powers: changing taxes, blacklisting wallets, minting tokens, or draining funds.
Blacklist function — A contract function that blocks specific wallet addresses from selling or transferring tokens. The EVM equivalent of Solana's freeze authority.
Bonding curve — A mathematical formula that determines token price based on supply purchased. Used by platforms like pump.fun for initial price discovery.
Bot trading — Automated programs that execute trades to create fake volume, push tokens to trending lists, and manipulate prices.
Burn / Burned — Tokens or LP tokens sent to a dead address (like 0x000...dead), permanently removing them from circulation. Burned LP means liquidity cannot be removed.
C
CA (Contract Address) — The unique blockchain address of a token's smart contract. Always verify the exact CA before buying — scammers create copycat tokens with similar names.
Circulating supply — The number of tokens actually available for trading, excluding burned, locked, and team-vested tokens.
Concentrated liquidity — A feature of Uniswap V3 and similar DEXes where liquidity is placed in specific price ranges. Can be manipulated by moving price outside the range.
Cross-validation — Checking a finding against multiple independent sources. ChainLens cross-validates between Honeypot.is and GoPlus for higher confidence detection.
D
Dead wallet / Dead address — An address with no private key (like 0x000...0000). Tokens sent here are permanently destroyed. Used for burning supply and LP tokens.
DEX (Decentralized Exchange) — A trading platform that operates through smart contracts without a central authority. Examples: Uniswap, PancakeSwap, Raydium, Jupiter.
Deployer — The wallet that created and deployed a token's smart contract. Checking the deployer's history reveals whether they are a serial scammer.
Dust attack — Sending tiny amounts of tokens to wallets to track transaction patterns and identify high-value targets for more sophisticated attacks.
DYOR (Do Your Own Research) — The principle that you should independently verify any token before investing, rather than relying on others' recommendations.
F
FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) — The theoretical market cap if all tokens in total supply were at the current price. Used to assess relative valuation.
Freeze authority — A Solana SPL token permission that lets the creator freeze any wallet's token account, preventing transfers and sells.
Front-running — Using knowledge of pending transactions to place your own transaction first, extracting value. MEV bots front-run on-chain transactions.
H
Hidden owner — A smart contract where ownership appears renounced but can be reclaimed through a hidden mechanism. Detected by GoPlus.
Holder concentration — The percentage of supply held by top wallets. High concentration (top holder > 20%) means one entity can crash the price.
Honeypot — A token that allows buying but blocks selling. The transfer function contains hidden conditions that prevent sell transactions.
I–L
Insider wallet — A wallet that received tokens through direct transfer from the creator rather than buying from a DEX. Shows as "unknown balance" in holder analysis.
LP (Liquidity Provider) tokens — Tokens received when adding liquidity to a pool. Represent your share of the pool. If not locked or burned, can be used to remove all liquidity.
LP lock — LP tokens held by a third-party locker contract until a specified date. Check the locker service, lock amount, and expiry date.
M–P
MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) — Profit extracted by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions within a block. MEV bots can front-run your trades.
Mint authority / Mintable — The ability to create new tokens. If not revoked, the creator can mint unlimited supply and drain the liquidity pool.
Mutable metadata — Token name, image, and description that can be changed by the creator after launch. Scammers change metadata to avoid tracking.
Personal slippage — A contract function that sets different tax rates for different wallets. Your wallet might pay 99% while the owner's pays 0%.
Proxy contract — A contract that delegates logic to another contract. The owner can change the implementation, altering the token's behavior after deployment.
Pump and dump — Artificially inflating a token's price through promotions and bot trading, then selling to extract value from buyers.
R–S
Recovery scam — Scammers targeting scam victims with fake "fund recovery" services. They charge upfront fees and recover nothing.
Revoke.cash — A free tool for auditing and revoking token approvals across all EVM chains. See our guide.
Rug pull — When a creator removes all liquidity from a trading pool, making the token worthless. The most common type of crypto scam.
Same-size clusters — Multiple wallets holding identical or near-identical token percentages, indicating coordinated ownership.
Slippage — The difference between expected and actual price during a trade. High slippage on sells can indicate hidden taxes or honeypot mechanics.
Sybil attack — Creating many wallets to fake decentralized ownership. One person appears as hundreds of independent holders.
T–W
Token approval — See "Approval" above. Manage yours at Revoke.cash.
Trust score — A numerical rating (0-100) that aggregates multiple risk factors into a single safety assessment. ChainLens calculates this across 89 individual checks.
Wash trading — Buying and selling with yourself to create artificial volume. Used to push tokens to trending lists.
Whale — A wallet holding a large percentage of a token's supply. Whale movements can dramatically impact price.