Glossary
Smart Contract Audit
An external review of contract code for bugs, before the contract holds real money.
An audit is a paid review of a smart contract's source code, looking for logic errors, reentrancy holes, and missing access controls. It is the closest thing crypto has to a safety inspection.
An audit lowers risk without removing it. Auditors review one version of the code and one moment in time, they miss things, and they do not test against every future condition the contract can meet. A clean audit is evidence of care, not a guarantee.
Practical check: read who did the audit, whether the code has changed since, and whether the team acted on the findings. A published report that lists unresolved critical issues is a warning, not a formality.
Related terms
Airdrop
Free tokens distributed to wallet addresses, usually to reward early users of a protocol.
AMM
Automated Market Maker — a protocol that prices assets with a formula instead of an order book.
APR vs APY
APR is the yearly rate without compounding; APY includes compounding and is always higher.
ATH
All-Time High — the highest price an asset has ever traded at.
Bear Market
A prolonged decline, conventionally 20% or more from recent highs.
Bull Market
A prolonged rise driven by new demand, easy credit and rising confidence.