Internet communities are quick to create a sort of special language that might increase the barriers to join those communities. Not by a lot, let’s be honest. But still, one should always have the jargon on point so that you can communicate more easily, and not miss out on news about the community; in this case, NFTs.
Say you’re hanging at a Twitter Spaces and someone asks you a question that’s got a lot of slang to it. You don’t want to look like you do not know anything, even though knowing jargon shouldn’t be an indicator of the knowledge someone has about the NFT space.
The NFT space has created a jargon and lingo of its own. So, to all the newbies that are just getting started in the NFT space, here is a small glossary of terms that you will encounter with some frequency.
1/1 NFT
When you are looking to buy a NFT whose value is based mostly on the art and its own uniqueness, people in the NFT space tend to refer to it as a 1/1 NFT (or one of one NFT). People have started to refer to this type NFTs in this way because usually a single NFT —an edition— is part of a broader collection that has randomized attributes, some of them are common and other attributes will be scarce. A 1/1 NFT does not need to worry about such things, because it is unique.
1/1 NFTs are the type of NFT art that you’ll find at a gallery, such as SOPRG. It will be a very different experience than looking for NFT projects that are based on a PFP character with different variations, whose utility is based on community or access to a game.
At its core, 1/1 NFTs are art.
Mint
The process of transforming art into a tradeable asset is known as ‘minting’. In this process, you assign a token to the art. Thanks to this, a new NFT is birthed. Some mints require payment to the artist, others just the transactional cost —the gas fee— to put that newly created art in circulation inside the blockchain.
Gas
Tasks inside the blockchain entail a cost. This cost, a transaction cost, is known as ‘gas fee’. Why gas? Well, because powering the blockchain is a very energy intensive process. Due to this, it’s important that you always have some of the blockchains native currency in your wallet. If your wallet does not have ETH or SOL you might not be able to operate in the Ethereum or Solana blockchains, respectively.
Degen
Shorthand for degenerate, a ‘degen’ is a person that goes all in on a project (or enters heavily on said project) without doing due diligence on it. He or she will count on hype and speculation of people that see the price of the asset going up.
Inside the NFT space, you’ll see that people own up to the tag of ‘degen’, and will wear this badge proudly even. Today, you can even see people refer to project launches as ‘degen mints’ if they are done at a low price to get in as many people into the project.
A ‘degen’ is, at its core, a speculator that is looking to make a buck really fast. A person that loves to get into the hype of a project, and hype as many into it. Hype and ‘degen’ go hand in hand.
Alpha
This term means “intel” or privileged information. ‘Having alpha’ basically means having information that is not available to the wider NFT audience. If someone is asking for alpha, they are basically requesting some sort of inside information. Intel of what might come in order to make a decision that is going to pay off because it is taken before other people decide make it as well.
DYOR
DYOR (pronounced Dee-Or, like the luxury fashion brand) is an acronym that stands for Do Your Own Research. As you get information about different projects and interact with the founders and team members —or just as you read someone’s reflection on the current state of NFTs— you will be usually be reminded to ‘DYOR’.
This is usually done to shield from responsibility from failed investments in NFTs. But also, it is a good way of providing more viewpoints that are based on research, and see what concerns there might be.
Floor
The floor is the lowest priced NFT of a given collection. You’ll come across the acronym FP (Floor Price) with certain frequency, as it usually serves as an indicator of how good a project is doing. The floor price on its own is not the best of indicators. You should have a glook at how many owners the project has, the amount of trading volume that has occurred. That way, you’ll know that the floor price is not being kept artificially high.
Drop
When someone ‘drops’ a NFT collection it means that they are launching it; it is being released into the market. Pretty simple.
Airdrop
Not to be confused with ‘drop’. An airdrop is a way for project founders to give their community a little token of their appreciation. They can give NFTs, tokens and many more things. So, airdropping basically means giving something directly to the wallet of the recipient. Airdrops are used for marketing purposes, in order to maintain the happiness of the investors and keep them hyped.
And if you want to learn even more, we share one of our recommended articles that is even more comprehensive for NFT – a complete guide to NFT by Tom Read.