Glossary
Every term on this site, in plain English.
- AMM
- Automated Market Maker — the pool-based system DEXes use instead of order books. You trade against a pool of two tokens, and the pool's math sets the price.
- Backtest
- Checking what a trading rule would have earned or lost on historical data before risking real money on it.
- Boost
- A paid promotion on DexScreener that pushes a token up trending lists. Boosted visibility is bought, not earned.
- Burner wallet
- A throwaway wallet holding a small amount, used for risky interactions so a compromise can't reach your main funds.
- DEX
- Decentralized exchange — trading directly from your wallet via smart contracts (Raydium, Uniswap, Orca) instead of an account on a company's servers.
- Drawdown
- How far a position falls from its peak. Max drawdown is the worst-case dip you'd have sat through.
- FDV
- Fully Diluted Valuation — price × total supply including unreleased tokens. Often far higher than market cap; a big gap means heavy future unlock pressure.
- Freeze authority
- A Solana token permission letting the deployer block wallets from transferring tokens. Active freeze authority enables honeypots — you can buy but not sell.
- Honeypot
- A token designed so buyers can't sell. The chart only goes up because nobody is able to take profit — until the deployer exits.
- Liquidity
- Money in a token's trading pool. Determines whether you can exit a position without crashing the price yourself.
- LP / LP tokens
- Liquidity Provider tokens — receipts for money deposited in a pool. If the deployer holds them unburned/unlocked, they can pull the pool (rug) at any time.
- Market cap
- Price × circulating supply. On brand-new tokens it's easily faked because price is set by a tiny, manipulable pool.
- Mint authority
- A Solana permission letting the deployer create new tokens at will. Unrevoked mint authority means your share can be diluted to zero in one transaction.
- Momentum
- The tendency of price moves to continue short-term. Radar scores it 0–100 from volume growth, price change, activity, and pair age.
- Pair
- A two-token trading pool, like SDOG/SOL. One token can have several pairs; the highest-liquidity pair is the real market.
- Rug pull
- An exit scam where insiders drain a token's liquidity or dump their supply, leaving holders unable to sell at any meaningful price.
- Slippage
- The gap between the price you expect and the price you get, caused by your own trade moving a small pool.
- Snipe
- Buying within seconds of a token's launch, usually with bots. Most 'early winners' on new pairs are snipers planning to dump on you.
- Stop loss
- A pre-decided exit price that caps your loss. On thin liquidity, expect the real exit to be worse than the number you set.
- Wash trading
- Bots trading a token with themselves to fake volume and climb trending lists. The tell: daily volume many multiples of liquidity.
- Watchlist
- A saved set of tokens you're monitoring — research before commitment.
- Win rate
- Percentage of trades (or alerts) that ended profitable over a given window. Meaningless without knowing average win vs average loss size.