| APR (Annual Percentage Rate) | The simple interest rate earned over a year, without accounting for compounding |
| APY (Annual Percentage Yield) | The actual rate of return earned over a year, including the effect of compounding interest |
| AUM (Assets Under Management) | The total market value of assets that a vault or platform manages on behalf of users |
| CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) | The cost of acquiring a new customer, including marketing, referral rewards, and onboarding expenses |
| Chain Abstraction | A design pattern that hides the complexity of multi-chain interactions from the user, presenting a unified interface regardless of the underlying blockchain |
| DeFi (Decentralized Finance) | Financial services built on blockchain technology that operate without traditional intermediaries such as banks |
| Delta-Neutral | An investment strategy that maintains a net-zero exposure to directional market movements by balancing long and short positions |
| DEX (Decentralized Exchange) | A cryptocurrency exchange that operates on a blockchain without a central authority, using smart contracts to facilitate trades |
| Epoch | A defined time period during which certain vault operations (such as deposits and withdrawals) are batched and processed together |
| ERC-20 | A technical standard for fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain |
| FX (Foreign Exchange) | The conversion of one currency into another at a prevailing market rate |
| High-Water Mark | The highest NAV a vault has achieved, used as a benchmark for calculating performance fees (fees are only charged on gains above this level) |
| IBAN (International Bank Account Number) | A standardized international numbering system for individual bank accounts, used to facilitate cross-border transactions |
| KYC (Know Your Customer) | The process of verifying the identity of users to comply with anti-money laundering regulations |
| LTV (Lifetime Value) | The total revenue a platform expects to generate from a single user over the entire duration of their relationship |
| MEV (Miner Extractable Value) | The profit that miners or validators can extract by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions within a block |
| MPC (Multi-Party Computation) | A cryptographic technique that allows multiple parties to jointly compute a function over their inputs while keeping those inputs private |
| NAV (Net Asset Value) | The total value of a vault's assets minus its liabilities, divided by the number of outstanding shares |
| Neobank | A digital-only bank that operates without physical branches, offering financial services through mobile apps and online platforms |
| Oracle | A service that provides external data (such as asset prices) to smart contracts on a blockchain |
| RWA (Real-World Assets) | Traditional financial assets (such as bonds, real estate, and commodities) that have been tokenized and brought on-chain |
| Slippage | The difference between the expected price of a trade and the actual execution price, typically caused by market movement or insufficient liquidity |
| Smart Contract | A self-executing program stored on a blockchain that automatically enforces the terms of an agreement when predefined conditions are met |
| Stablecoin | A cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value relative to a reference asset, typically the US dollar |
| TVL (Total Value Locked) | The total value of assets deposited in a DeFi protocol or vault |
| vToken | A vault share token issued to users upon deposit, representing their proportional ownership of the vault's total assets |