S&P 500 (Standard and Poor's 500)
A stock market index tracking the performance of 500 major publicly listed U.S. companies, often used as a benchmark for market trends.
Satoshi (SATS)
The smallest unit of Bitcoin, equal to 0.00000001 BTC. Named after Bitcoin’s creator, it allows for microtransactions in the Bitcoin network.
Satoshi Nakamoto
The pseudonymous creator or group behind Bitcoin. Their identity remains unknown, but their work launched the modern crypto era.
Scale-Free Money
A system where users define values or goals and link denominations of money directly to those values for programmable finance.
Scaling Problem
The challenge blockchains face when trying to handle a higher volume of transactions without sacrificing speed or security.
Scaling Solution
Any method that helps a blockchain process more transactions efficiently, such as rollups, sidechains, or sharding.
Scam
A fraudulent scheme intended to deceive people into giving away money or crypto, often by impersonation or false promises.
Scamcoin
A cryptocurrency with no legitimate use case or development, usually launched to profit quickly from investors’ speculation.
Scammer
An individual or group conducting fraudulent activities in the crypto space, targeting users through deception.
Scholarship / Scholar
A lending system in play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity, where asset owners lend their NFTs to others in exchange for shared profits.
Script
A list of coded instructions executed by a program. In crypto, scripts can automate trades, wallet functions, or contract actions.
Scripting Programming Language
Languages like Python or JavaScript used to automate tasks through scripts, often applied in bots or blockchain tools.
Scrypt
A memory-intensive proof-of-work algorithm used by Litecoin and others, designed to resist ASIC mining and promote decentralization.
Second-Layer Solutions
Technologies built atop base blockchains to improve performance, such as Lightning Network, Plasma, or Optimistic Rollups.
Secondary Market
Where existing crypto assets are traded between users, not directly from issuers. Most exchanges operate in this space.
Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU)
An emergency fund created by Binance to protect user assets during extreme situations like exchange hacks.
Secure Element
A physical chip used in hardware wallets and devices to protect private keys and sensitive data from tampering.
Secure Multi-Party Computation (sMPC)
A cryptographic method allowing multiple parties to compute a function together without revealing individual inputs.
Secure Proof of Stake (SPoS)
A consensus mechanism combining proof of stake with additional security features to prevent manipulation and enhance performance.
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
The U.S. government agency overseeing securities markets, often involved in regulating crypto assets deemed to be securities.
Security
A tradable financial instrument that holds value and represents ownership or debt, such as stocks or tokenized assets.
Security Token
A digital representation of a traditional security (like shares) on a blockchain, regulated by financial authorities.
Security Token Offering (STO)
A fundraising model where investors purchase regulated security tokens representing ownership or claims on future profits.
Seed Funding
The initial capital raised by a startup to build its business, usually in exchange for equity or early investor tokens.
Seed Phrase
A series of 12 or 24 words that can regenerate a user’s crypto wallet and private keys. Must be stored securely.
Segregated Witness (SegWit)
A Bitcoin upgrade that removed signature data from blocks, reducing transaction size and enabling second-layer scaling.
Selfish Mining
A strategy where miners withhold discovered blocks to gain an advantage and potentially earn more rewards.
Sell Wall
A large order to sell an asset placed at a specific price level, creating resistance and potentially influencing market sentiment.
Semantic Web
A vision of the internet where data is machine-readable and interlinked, enabling smarter, decentralized applications.
Series B Funding
A later stage of startup financing following initial seed and Series A rounds, often used to scale operations.
Settlement
The process of finalizing and recording a trade on a blockchain or exchange, transferring ownership of assets.
Settlement Layer
The foundational layer of a blockchain where actual value transfers and transaction finality are secured.
SHA-256
A cryptographic hash function producing a 256-bit output, central to Bitcoin's proof-of-work mining algorithm.
Shamir’s Secret Sharing
A method of splitting a private key into parts so that only a certain number of parts are needed to recover the original.
Shanghai Upgrade
An Ethereum network update that introduced the ability to unstake ETH, following the move to proof of stake.
Shard
A segment of a blockchain's state and transaction history, used in sharded networks to enable parallel processing.
Shard Chain
A separate chain within a sharded blockchain system, processing a portion of network activity independently.
Sharding
A scalability technique dividing a blockchain into shards to process more transactions in parallel, increasing throughput.
Shelley Phase
A phase in Cardano’s roadmap focused on decentralization and staking, named after poet Percy Shelley.
Shiba Inu Token (SHIB)
An Ethereum-based memecoin originally launched as a parody of Dogecoin, now with a growing ecosystem.
Shielded Address
An address used in privacy-focused cryptocurrencies that hides transaction details from public view.
Shielded Transaction
A transaction between shielded addresses where sender, receiver, and amount are encrypted.
Shilling
Aggressively promoting a crypto project, often for personal gain and without disclosing vested interests.
Shitcoin
A derogatory term for cryptocurrencies with no real value or purpose, often created for quick profits.
SHO (Strong Holder Offering)
A fundraising method where investors are selected based on long-term holding behavior and on-chain activity.
Short
A trading position that profits if an asset’s price goes down. Traders borrow, sell, then repurchase lower to profit.
Short Squeeze
A price spike caused by short sellers rushing to buy back assets to cover their positions, accelerating the price rise.
Side Channel Attack
A cyberattack exploiting physical or timing characteristics of a device, rather than flaws in the code.
Sidechain
An independent blockchain linked to a main chain, allowing assets to be transferred and used with different rules.
Signal
An alert or recommendation to buy or sell an asset based on indicators, strategy, or external service.
Silk Road
A now-defunct dark web marketplace that accepted Bitcoin for illegal goods and was shut down by the FBI in 2013.
SIM-Swap
A type of identity theft where attackers take control of your mobile number to intercept 2FA codes and steal crypto.
Simple Agreement for Future Token (SAFT)
A legal framework for selling tokens that grants buyers rights to future token allocations, often before launch.
Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP)
A protocol on Bitcoin Cash that lets users create and manage custom tokens directly on the BCH blockchain.
Simplified Payment Verification (SPV)
A lightweight method for validating transactions without downloading the full blockchain, used in mobile wallets.
Skynet
A decentralized hosting platform built on the Sia blockchain, offering censorship-resistant file storage.
Slashing
A penalty mechanism in PoS networks for misbehavior or downtime by validators, often resulting in lost stake.
Slippage
The difference between the expected and actual price of a trade, usually due to low liquidity or fast-moving markets.
Slot (Cardano)
The smallest time unit in Cardano's consensus protocol, used to organize blocks and validate transactions.
Smart Contract
A self-executing agreement written in code, stored on the blockchain, and triggered automatically when conditions are met.
Smart Contract Audit
A thorough review of a smart contract’s codebase by security professionals to uncover bugs or vulnerabilities.
Smart Home
A household setup with internet-connected devices that can be managed remotely or automated for convenience and efficiency.
Smart Money
Funds moved by experienced investors or institutions with a history of successful trades and market timing.
Smart Token
Tokens with embedded logic to enable automatic transaction execution or behavior directly within the token contract.
Smart Treasury (Balancer)
A system that automatically buys back and burns a project’s tokens to support price stability and long-term value.
Snapshot
A record of the blockchain at a specific point, used for token airdrops, governance votes, or fork planning.
Sniping in Crypto
A high-speed trading tactic to gain early access to tokens or catch quick arbitrage opportunities at launch.
Social Engineering
Manipulating individuals into revealing confidential information, often used in phishing or impersonation attacks.
Soft Cap
The minimum funding goal of a token sale or ICO, below which the project may not proceed.
Soft Fork (Blockchain)
A backward-compatible blockchain update where non-upgraded nodes still recognize the new blocks as valid.
Soft Peg
A monetary policy where a currency’s value is loosely tied to another asset, such as a stablecoin with price flexibility.
Software Library
A prewritten collection of code that developers can integrate into their applications to add specific functionality.
Software Stack
A combination of software tools, frameworks, and systems used together to build and run applications.
Software Wallet
A digital wallet installed on a device, allowing users to manage crypto assets while maintaining control of their keys.
Solana Virtual Machine (SVM)
The runtime environment that processes smart contracts and transactions on the Solana blockchain.
Solidity
The primary programming language used to develop smart contracts on Ethereum and compatible chains.
Solver
A participant in a decentralized intent-based system who executes user requests by optimizing transaction outcomes.
Source Code
The human-readable version of a program written in a programming language, often available for auditing or collaboration.
SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company)
An investment vehicle that goes public to raise funds and then merges with a target company, often used in crypto IPOs.
Spear Phishing
A targeted attack where emails or messages are crafted to deceive specific individuals and trick them into sharing data.
Speculative Investment
An investment with high risk and potential reward, based more on price appreciation than fundamentals.
Spoon (Blockchain)
A blockchain protocol that builds atop another existing network, similar to a fork but more like a meta-layer.
Spot
A type of crypto trading where assets are bought or sold for immediate settlement at the current market price.
Spot Market
A market where assets are exchanged instantly rather than through future contracts or derivative positions.
Spot Trading
Trading crypto assets for immediate settlement, often on centralized exchanges or DEXs with liquidity pools.
Spyware
Malicious software that records user behavior or extracts data without consent, often targeting wallet credentials.
Stablecoin
A cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value, often pegged to fiat currency or commodities.
Stacking Sats
The act of regularly accumulating small amounts of Bitcoin, often as a long-term saving strategy.
Stagflation
An economic scenario where inflation rises while economic growth stagnates, creating difficult policy decisions.
Staking
Locking up cryptocurrency in a proof-of-stake network to validate transactions and earn rewards.
Staking Pool
A collective of users combining crypto assets to increase their chance of earning staking rewards.
Stale Block
A valid block that was mined but not included in the main chain because another block was confirmed first.
State Channel
A second-layer solution enabling off-chain transactions between participants, with only final results recorded on-chain.
Stochastic Oscillator
A momentum indicator comparing a crypto asset’s closing price to its price range over a set period to identify reversals.
Stock-to-Flow Ratio
A scarcity metric dividing total supply by annual production, often used to evaluate Bitcoin’s price trajectory.
Stop-Loss Order
An automatic trade order to sell an asset if its price falls below a predetermined threshold to limit losses.
Storage (Decentralized)
A data storage method using distributed nodes and cryptographic verification instead of centralized cloud services.
Storage Miners
Participants in decentralized networks like Filecoin who provide storage capacity and earn tokens for hosting data.
Storage Node
A device in a decentralized storage network that stores encrypted data fragments across a distributed system.
Store of Value
An asset that maintains purchasing power over time, such as gold or Bitcoin, used to preserve wealth.
Stroop
The smallest divisible unit of the Stellar Lumens (XLM) cryptocurrency, equal to 0.0000001 XLM.
Subgraph Manifest
A configuration file used in The Graph protocol that defines how to fetch and index blockchain data.
Subnet
A smaller network within a larger system, used to divide and manage traffic or resources in blockchain infrastructure.
Substrate
A blockchain framework developed by Parity Technologies, used to build Polkadot and other custom blockchains.
Succinct Proofs of Random Access (SPoRA)
A mechanism used in Arweave to validate access to random pieces of data, ensuring miners maintain complete data copies.
Supercomputer
A high-performance computing system capable of executing complex calculations, including cryptographic tasks.
Supercycle
An extended bullish trend across a market or asset class, often driven by macroeconomic or technological shifts.
Supply and Demand
The fundamental economic model determining prices based on buyer interest (demand) and available quantity (supply).
Supply Chain
The full process of producing and delivering a product. In crypto, it’s often used in blockchain-based tracking solutions.
Supply Chain Attack
A security breach where attackers compromise a product by targeting its third-party components or developers.
Support Level
A price point where a crypto asset tends to stop falling due to strong buying interest.
Surge (Ethereum)
An upgrade phase focused on scalability improvements for Ethereum, including rollups and data sharding.
Swarm
A decentralized storage layer and peer-to-peer system for storing and distributing data, originally part of Ethereum’s stack.
Swing Failure Pattern (SFP)
A trading pattern that occurs when price breaks a recent high or low, then quickly reverses, indicating trend exhaustion.
Swing Trading
A trading strategy that captures gains over days or weeks by identifying short- to mid-term price movements.
Sybil Attack
An exploit where one attacker creates multiple fake identities to gain control or disrupt a decentralized network.
Symbol
A cryptocurrency’s trading code or shorthand, such as BTC for Bitcoin or ETH for Ethereum.
Symmetric Key Cryptography
An encryption method where the same key is used to both encrypt and decrypt information.
Synthetic Asset
A blockchain-based asset that mimics the value of another asset, such as stocks or commodities, without actual ownership.