🔤 A Glossary of 30+ ICO Concepts: Part 1

Priority Token
Aug 31, 2018 · 4 min read

An ICO industry, just like any other industry, has its own glossary of terms. If you are involved in the crypto-world, either as an investor or as a project founder, you should know these terms and their precise meaning, in order to protect yourself from misunderstanding some essential information.

Priority Token has prepared a Glossary of 30+ ICO Concepts, that will come in handy for everyone who considers himself related to this industry. We’ve included basic terms alongside with more complicated ones since there’s always a risk of thinking that you understand a word without really understanding it. So, even if you are a pro in ICOs and crypto, take the time to test your knowledge.

This is Part 1 of the Glossary, and it contains 15 terms from ‘2FA’ to ‘FUD’.

1. 2FA (Two Factor Authentication) — a security option for verifying the user identity that implies two steps of validation.

2. Accredited Investor — as SEC (the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) puts it, an accredited investor is anyone with an “earned income that exceeded $200,000 (or $300,000 together with a spouse) in each of the prior two years, and reasonably expects the same for the current year, or has a net worth over $1 million, either alone or together with a spouse (excluding the value of the person’s primary residence).”

3. Airdrop — a campaign that facilitates a wide distribution of project tokens and consists in sending a small amount of these tokens to random wallet addresses in public blockchains.

4. AML (Anti-Money Laundering) — a set of regulations that defines responsibility for ‘laundering’ of ill-gotten money. AML laws and acts require ICO projects, as well as other institutions, to apply certain compliance obligations to reveal, forestall, and report money laundering and/or other fishy activities.

5. Blockchain — an open distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. Basically, blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked together by the means of cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. A majority of blockchains is managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a certain protocol for inter-node communication and validating new blocks. Once recorded, the data in the blocks can’t be changed without alteration of all subsequent blocks.

6. Bounty Program — a way to promote an ICO by outsourcing marketing activities to anyone wishing to participate. Bounty programs may include all kinds of actions, from social media posts to content creation and translation. The bounty program participants are rewarded with the project tokens.

7. Coin Burn (Token Burn) — a process of destroying a specified quantity of tokens at the end of the crowdsale period. Generally, the project owners burn unsold tokens, so that the supply of the token remains limited. Coin burn is meant to enhance the token value and prevent fraudulent actions.

8. Cryptocurrency — a digital currency that utilizes cryptography to secure and verify all the transactions. Basically, cryptocurrency is a limited entry in a secure decentralized database that no one can alter under normal conditions. Cryptocurrency is not issued by any centralized authority, which makes it almost immune to any interference from financial institutions or public bodies.

9. DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service Attack) — a type of hacker’s attack that entails traffic from numerous sources flooding a system and leading it to a temporal shutdown.

10. ERC-20 — a type of token standard which ensures the tokens perform in a predictable way. Compliance with this standard allows the tokens to be easily exchanged or seamlessly embedded into any software that operates with ERC-20 standard. Most tokens issued by ICO projects are compliant to the ERC-20 standard.

11. Escrow contract — a type of agreement that implies a specific pattern of making a deal. One party transfers money or assets to a third party. The last transfers the said money or asset to the second party, but only when a certain condition is reached. This reduces the risk of money loss in case of any fraud from any of the two parties entering into an agreement.

12. Fiat currency — as opposed to cryptocurrency, is a currency issued by state authorities and declared by the government to be legal tender.

13. Flipping — an investment strategy that implies purchasing an asset with a primary goal of further reselling it with a profit. In ICOs, flipping means buying tokens on early stages, before they are listed on the exchanges, and reselling them later for a profit.

14. FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) — a fear of missing out on a presumably profitable investment opportunity and deeply regretting it later. A strong sensation of an urgent need to get on the train, that commonly appears when the price of certain tokens starts to skyrocket.

15. FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) — a crooked strategy of spreading negative information about an ICO or the team behind it.

These were the first 15 ICO-related concepts from Priority Token. Stay around not to miss out on Part 2. You believe we’ve left out some essential concepts? Let us know about that in the comment section!

Priority Token

Priority Token is your highway to successful ICO

Priority Token

Written by

Priority Token is your highway to successful ICO http://ptoken.io/

Priority Token

Priority Token is your highway to successful ICO

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade