1:1 Art
A unique NFT art piece that only exists in one edition.
Airdrop
New NFTs or cryptocurrencies that are automatically sent to your wallet for free. This is a common practice in the crypto space to attract and reward early project adopters.
Beeple
Beeple is the professional name of Michael Joseph Winkelmann, an American digital artist, graphic designer, and animator. He is known for using various mediums in creating comical, phantasmagoric works that makes political, social commentary while using pop culture figures as references.
Binance Smart Chain
A blockchain compatible with buying and selling NFTs. While Ethereum is the most popular blockchain for NFTs, prominent competitors include Binance and Solana.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency, without a central bank or single administrator, that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network, without the need for intermediaries.
Blockchain
A blockchain is a distributed database that is shared among the nodes of a computer network. As a database, a blockchain stores information electronically in digital format. Blockchains are best known for their crucial role in cryptocurrency systems, such as Bitcoin, for maintaining a secure and decentralized record of transactions. The innovation with a blockchain is that it guarantees the fidelity and security of a record of data and generates trust, without the need for a trusted third party.
Burn
To burn an NFT is to effectively destroy it. While technically NFTs always remain on the blockchain, you can remove one from circulation by sending it to a wallet address that can’t be accessed.
Cold Wallet (also called Hardware Wallet)
A cold wallet is a physical device that keeps your crypto assets (e.g., cryptocurrency, NFTs) completely offline. Many such cold wallets look like USB drives. A cold wallet is much more secure than what is called hot wallet (see below), since it keeps your crypto assets off line. The disadvantage is the possibility of losing your device and hence the assets that it contains. Cold wallet providers include Ledger Nano, Trezor, CoolWallet.
COLDIE
Coldie is an award-winning mixed media artist whose stereoscopic 3D art has been featured in national juried art exhibitions, major cryptocurrency events, and live auctions.
Colored Coins
The term “Colored Coins” loosely describes a class of methods for representing and managing real world assets on top of the Bitcoin Blockchain.
Cryptokitties
CryptoKitties is a blockchain game on Ethereum developed by Canadian studio Dapper Labs that allows players to purchase, collect, breed and sell virtual cats. It is one of the earliest attempts to deploy blockchain technology for recreation and leisure.
Cryptopunks
CryptoPunks are a set of 10,000 pixel-art images, with each being a uniquely generated character made by Larva Labs in 2017. Digital asset platform Anchorage helped Vis acquire CryptoPunk7610.
Damien Hirst
Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur, and art collector. He launched “The Currency” project, which involved selling 10,000 unique hand-painted dot-covered works on paper, each one corresponding to a nonfungible token. He is reportedly the United Kingdom’s richest living artist, with his wealth estimated at $384 million in the 2020
dApps
A decentralized application (DApp, dApp, Dapp, or dapp) is a computer application that runs on a decentralized computing system. dApps have been popularized by distributed ledger technologies (DLT) such as the Ethereum blockchain, where DApps are often referred to as smart contracts.
Decentraland
Decentraland is a decentralized 3D virtual reality platform that consists of 90,601 parcels land. Virtual estate in Decentraland are NFTs which can be bought by the cryptocurrency MANA, which is based on the Ethereum blockchain. It was opened to the public in February 2020 and is overseen by the nonprofit Decentraland Foundation.
DeFi
An acronym for decentralized finance.
Delist
To remove an NFT from an exchange. Delisting an NFT incurs gas fees. NFT communities often encourage holders to delist NFTs before big announcements.
DEX
Decentralized exchanges (DEX) are DeFi platforms which use blockchain technologies and networks for allowing users to make crypto operations. They do not have any governing body and do not control users’ funds.
Enjin
Enjin is a blockchain based gaming platform that focuses on making player-owned digital items like NFTs. They offer ways to create tokens that can be used across multiple video games, and can also be used across various platforms from PC to mobile.
ERC-721
ERC-721 refers to a token standard that can be found on the Ethereum blockchain.
Ethereum
A blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ethereum is currently the main platform for NFT projects.
Ethereum 2.0
Ethereum 2.0 (ETH2) is an upgrade to the Ethereum network that aims to improve the network’s security and scalability. This upgrade involves Ethereum shifting their current mining model to a staking model.
Everydays
A collage of 5000 digital images created by Winkelmann for his Everydays series. Its associated non-fungible token (NFT) was sold for $69.3 million at Christie’s in 2021, the most expensive NFT and among the most expensive works by a living artist.
Fidenza Line
Artist Tyler Hobbs‘ Fidenza Line consists of 999 unique Art Blocks depicting a pattern of colorful squares and rectangles which are generated via an algorithm. The series’ Fidenza #313 recently sold for 1,000 ETH, which amounted to just over $3.3 million USD at the time of transaction. The artwork was sold to the previous buyer for just 0.58 ETH (around $1,400 USD) on June 11, marking a truly mindboggling return within the span of two months.
Floor Price
The lowest NFT price in a collection. To “buy the floor” or “floor sweep” is to buy the cheapest NFT in a collection.
Fractionalized NFTs
Fractionalized NFTs are NFTs split into smaller pieces by their original owner. They can be split into as little as 2 pieces or even billions! This makes it possible for anyone to partially own iconic NFTs like CryptoPunks. When an NFT gets fractionalized, the pieces get locked into a smart contract
Fungibility
Means replaceability. Dollars are fungible because a dollar owed can be paid using any dollar in existence. Something that is non-fungible, like a painting or NFT, is one-of-a-kind.
FVCKRENDER
Frederic Duquette aka FVCKRENDER is one of the most well-known artists in the NFT space making waves by selling a piece of art for 25 ETH. He’s been featured on Nifty Gateway and SuperRare. A self-taught 3d artist based in Vancouver, he focuses on “sharp architectural geometry, beaming future landscapes and brilliant crystalline arrangements.”
Gas fees
NFT Gas is the term given to the fee that most NFT trading platforms charge. This is incurred to conduct the transaction or execute a contract on their blockchain platform. Gas prices in Ethereum are denoted by unit of Gwei. It is determined by the amount of traffic on the network and the computation power taken to execute a transaction.
Gas war
A gas war occurs during an NFT collection launch where there are more buyers (e.g. 100,000) than the amount of NFTs (e.g. 10,000) available for sale. In these situations, you’ll need to increase your gas fee to outbid other buyers, in hopes that your transaction would go through faster than theirs to secure your purchase.
Generative Art
A project in which NFTs are generated from a pool of limited assets. In a generative art collection, each NFT can have a unique set of traits while still sharing individual traits with other NFTs in the collection.
Hardware Wallet
See Cold Wallet above.
Hot Wallet (also called Software Wallet)
A hot wallet refers to a virtual currency wallet that is accessible online, and it facilitates cryptocurrency transactions between the owner and end-users. The most popular of hot wallets is Metamask. Other hot wallets are Walletconnect, Coinbase, and Fortomatic. Note that because hot wallets are accessible online, they are more vulnerable to attacks than what are called “Cold Wallets” (also called, “Hardware Wallets”).
InterPlanetary File System
Means of storing NFT data that is considered superior to storing on an HTTP gateway URL, since the latter is tied to a specific provider. IPFS addresses allow users to find a piece of content so long as someone on the network is hosting it.
Jack Dorsey
CEO of Twitter sold an NFT of his first Tweet for $2.9 million.
Ledger
A public ledger derives its name from the age-old record-keeping system used to record information, such as agricultural commodity prices, news, and analysis. The public ledger was available for general public viewing as well as for verification. As cryptocurrency-based blockchain systems emerged, which rely on a similar record-keeping and public verification mechanism, the use of the public ledger gained popularity in the world of cryptocurrency.
Liquidity
Liquidity is the ability of a coin to be easily converted into cash or other coins.
Liquidity pool
Crowd-sourced pool of cryptocurrencies or tokens locked in a smart contract to facilitate trades between the assets on a decentralized exchange (DEX).
Metaverse
A virtual 3D world where people can interact. Popular blockchain-based metaverses include Decentraland and The Sandbox, virtual gaming worlds where users can buy and sell land NFTs.
Mint
Minting an NFT is how your digital asset becomes a part of the Ethereum blockchain – a public ledger that is unchangeable and tamper-proof. Similar to the way that metal coins are minted and added into circulation, NFTs are also tokens that get “minted” once they are created.
Mintable
Mintable is a Singapore-based, Mark Cuban-backed non-fungible token (NFT) platform. It is currently striving to become the world’s largest NFT marketplace by cataloging all NFTs ever minted on Ethereum as part of a major platform upgrade.
Multisig
Short for “multi-signature wallet”. It is a wallet that requires more than one signature to a transaction before moving funds for added security. Multisig wallets are frequently used in DAOs.
NFT
A non-fungible token (“NFT”) is a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a digital ledger (blockchain). NFTs can be associated with reproducible digital files such as photos, videos, and audio. NFTs use a digital ledger to provide a public certificate of authenticity or proof of ownership, but do not restrict the sharing or copying of the underlying digital files. The lack of interchangeability (fungibility) distinguishes NFTs from blockchain cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin.
NFTfi
NFTfi is a platform for P2P loans that use one of your NFTs as collateral for the transaction.
Nifty Gateway
Nifty Gateway is a digital art online auction platform for non-fungible token art founded by Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster, and has since been acquired by the Winklevoss twins. Nifty Gateway has sold NFTs by Beeple, Grimes, LOGIK and other widely followed NFT artists.
Non-custodial wallet
A non-custodial wallet that offers you sole control of your private keys. On the other hand, a custodial wallet gives another party (usually a web-based exchange) control of your private keys. Some of the most popular non-custodian wallets are Metamask, Ledger Nano X, Trezor One.
Open editions
An NFT for which any number of editions may be minted, which is the opposite of a limited edition NFT (e.g., a collection with only 10,000 editions).
OpenSea
A peer-to-peer marketplace where goods such as gaming items, digital art, and other goods backed by a blockchain can be bought and sold. Launched in 2018, OpenSea is the first and largest NFT marketplace.
Pre-mine
The act of creating a set amount of tokens, before their public launch.
Private key
A private key is a variable in cryptography that is used with an algorithm to encrypt and decrypt data. In cryptocurrency, private keys are also used to sign transactions and prove ownership of a blockchain address.
Public key
Similar to private keys, it’s a cryptographic key that gives others viewing access to your wallet or NFTs. But unlike private keys, it doesn’t need to be kept secret.
Rarity
An important measure of an NFT’s value. The overall rarity of an NFT is usually determined by calculating the scarcity of its individual traits (e.g., by averaging them or multiplying them together).
Reveal
When you mint an NFT, especially for new generative projects, the artwork will not actually be created until the minting is complete. This means that you’re purchasing a ‘blind box’ and won’t know exactly what you get until it’s time to reveal it. Depending on the creators behind the collection, the NFT may reveal immediately after purchase, when the collection sells out, or within a delayed period of time (e.g., 24 or 48 hours).
Royalties
Money earned by an NFT creator through the token’s resale. Some NFTs automatically pay royalties each time an NFT is sold. An NFT can be hardcoded to pay an artist royalties forever, an interesting use case that has the potential to shake up the music industry.
Rug Pull
A classic scam in which a cryptocurrency or NFT project is promoted only for its creators and developers to disappear and run away with the money. A soft rug pull is a pernicious variation in which the developers reappear now and again to create the illusion that the project is legitimate.
Seed Phrase
A seed phrase is a group of random words generated by your crypto wallet when you first set it up. A seed phrase, seed recovery phrase or backup seed phrase is a list of words which store all the information needed to recover Bitcoin funds on-chain. Wallet software will typically generate a seed phrase and instruct the user to write it down on paper. If the user’s computer breaks or their hard drive becomes corrupted, they can download the same wallet software again and use the paper backup to get their bitcoins back. Anybody else who discovers the phrase can steal the bitcoins, so it must be kept safe like jewels or cash. For example, it must not be typed into any website.
Sharding
Sharding in the context of NFTs refers to the practice of splitting NFTs into smaller subsets, generally for the purpose of allowing groups of individuals to purchase an expensive NFT so that it can be owned collectively.
Smart contracts
Smart contracts are simply programs stored on a blockchain that run when predetermined conditions are met. They typically are used to automate the execution of an agreement so that all participants can be immediately certain of the outcome, without any intermediary’s involvement or time loss. They can also automate a workflow, triggering the next action when conditions are met.
Secondary market
Also called the aftermarket, a secondary market is the financial market where investors trade their assets with other investors rather than from issuing companies themselves. For NFTs, they can be sold or purchased on the secondary market after minting. Examples of popular secondary markets are OpenSea and TofuNFT.
Smart contract
An agreement that automatically executes when predetermined conditions are met. They’re enforced on the blockchain network, irreversible, and not subject to change.
Sofware Wallet
See Hot Wallet above.
Solana
One of the main challengers to Ethereum as a preferred blockchain for NFT marketplaces. Popular Solana marketplaces include Magic Eden, Solanart and Solsea.
Solidity
A programming language for writing smart contracts. Solidity is a high-level language like Java and Python that is ideal for Ethereum, which hosts most NFTs.
SuperRare
SuperRare is an NFT marketplace to collect and trade unique, single-edition digital artworks.
The Sandbox
The Sandbox is a decentralized, community-driven gaming ecosystem where designers and artists can create, share, and monetize NFTs and gaming experiences on the blockchain, and is partnered with many industry giants. Its popular virtual real estate, known as LANDs, are taking over the NFT world.
Utility-focused NFTs
NFTs with real-world use cases. For example, NFTs can be used to improve event ticketing. Digital art can also have utility coded into it. A utility NFT can be where someone receives a physical piece of art that matches the NFT they purchased; it could be unique access to an event, exclusive in-person memberships, or future use in the digital world (think within a game).
Vault
A smart contract that escrows collateral and keeps track of the value of the collateral.
Verified contract
A publicly available contract that allows users to read, study and audit the code. Verified contracts are prevalent on transactions where parties require a higher level of trust, preferably verifiable by another third party.
Wallet
Short for “crypto wallet”. A crypto wallet is an interface that lets you interact with your blockchain assets. Crypto assets are essentially data on the blockchain. Crypto wallets contain the private key to their location on that blockchain, and this private key determines whether you can access that crypto. Crypto wallets are broadly classified as hot wallets and cold wallets. Hot wallets store the keys to your cryptocurrencies on an internet-connected application while cold wallets keep them offline, disconnected from the internet.
Whitelist
An exclusive list of users who get guaranteed early access to mint a new NFT collection at a specified date and time.
If you have any questions or would like advice related to the matters set out in this post, or if you have questions in relation to matters of real estate, business law, intellectual property and trust and estate matters, please contact us at 604-688-4900 or by email to Paul Barbeau at paul@barbeau.co or to Morgan Best at morgan@barbeau.co