On-chain trading glossary
TraderView Research · Last verified
This glossary defines the terms used throughout our rankings: custody models, slippage, priority fees, MEV and MEV protection, limit orders, copy trading, sniping and key export. Each definition explains what the term means in practice and what risk it carries for a retail trader.
- Non-custodial wallet
- A wallet whose private key is held by you, not the platform. If the key can be exported, you can move funds even if the platform disappears.
- Custodial wallet
- A wallet whose keys are held by a company on your behalf. Convenient, but withdrawals depend on that company staying solvent and online.
- Slippage
- The difference between the price you expected and the price you received. On thin memecoin pairs it commonly exceeds every platform fee combined.
- Priority fee
- An extra payment to have a transaction included sooner. On Solana it rises sharply during congestion and is separate from the platform fee.
- MEV
- Maximal extractable value: profit taken by reordering, inserting or censoring transactions. Sandwich attacks are the form retail traders meet most often.
- MEV protection
- Routing that aims to reduce sandwich exposure, usually via private transaction relays. It reduces some risk; it cannot eliminate it.
- Limit order
- An instruction to trade only at or better than a set price. On-chain implementations rely on the platform's keeper infrastructure to execute.
- Copy trading
- Automatically mirroring another wallet's trades into your own. It transfers decision-making, not risk.
- Smart money
- A heuristic label for wallets with strong historical performance. Labels are inferred, not verified identities.
- Telegram trading bot
- A bot that executes swaps from chat commands using a wallet it generates. Your Telegram account security becomes part of your wallet security.
- Perpetual (perp)
- A derivative with no expiry that tracks an underlying price using funding payments. Leverage adds liquidation risk on top of market risk.
- Rug pull
- A token launch where insiders remove liquidity or dump supply, leaving buyers unable to exit at a meaningful price.
- Sniping
- Buying a token in the first blocks after launch. Higher potential edge, much higher exposure to malicious contracts.
- Published fee
- A fee documented by the platform itself. Where no such documentation exists, we publish “Not publicly confirmed” rather than an estimate.
- Chain coverage
- Which networks a platform can trade on. Multi-chain coverage adds a separate wallet and gas token to manage per chain.
- Key export
- The ability to reveal and move your private key out of a platform. It is the single most important safety feature in this category.