Popular NFT Terminologies

Hanging out on the NFT side of Twitter can be daunting for a newbie as there are a number of terms and slang thrown around that only the OGs are familiar with. I mean what does “I’mma ape in, LFG!!” or the constant GM spam even mean? Here’s your ultimate guide to understand what they mean so that you don’t miss out on “alpha” anymore. Let’s start with some abbreviations and slang.

BTD: Short for “Buy the dips,” it’s commonly said when the price of an asset temporarily drops and is likely to increase again in the future.

GM/GN: Discord servers being flooded with GMs literally just translate to “good morning.” It’s a way of greeting each other in the web3 space.

WAGMI: Short for “We’re all gonna make it.” It’s often said within communities when the project is doing well and looks promising.

NGMI: Opposite of WAGMI, “Not going to make it”.

LFG: Short for ‘Let’s f***king go!’. People use it in excitement when a new project launches or when there’s a huge announcement/update.

FUD: ‘FUD’ stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. It’s used to describe negative and usually inaccurate information regarding a project or token. For example, “Nah, that’s FUD. Solana’s surely GMI.”

GTD: Short for “Going to dust”. When an asset’s value continues to drop, people describe it as GTD.

Ape in: Aping in simply means buying something without doing much research, purely based on hype.

Flip: Selling an asset shortly after buying it to make a quick profit.

Probably nothing: An ironic term meaning to say “probably something important.” For example, “This project gold sold out overnight. Probably nothing.”

Looks rare: Again, an ironic term is used when an asset is pretty common and not much valuable.

Doxxed: When the identity of an NFT team member or creator is revealed to public, either by themselves or by someone else.

Moon: When you hear someone say “to the moon!” or “this is mooning,” they’re basically expecting or referring to the exponential growth of a project.

Shilling: Promoting an NFT project in hopes that the other person would invest in it.

Now, let’s learn some NFT investor/trader lingo.

Bullish: Being bullish = expecting an asset’s/market’s value to increase in future

Bearish: Being bearish = expecting an asset’s/market’s value to decrease in future

Diamond hands: People who hold on to an asset despite a bearish market.

Paper hands: People who sell at an unusually low price out of fear of loss.

Alpha: Investment or market-related knowledge that’s not very common

Rugpull: A scam wherein a seemingly legit project disappears with the investors’ money.

Whale: A person or a group that holds a very high amount of assets in a given project and thus has the power to singlehandedly change the market’s conditions by buying more or selling altogether.

Moving onto some technical terms:

Airdrop: Projects distributing assets to a certain group of people or the general public for free to either attract more investors or reward early project adopters.

Blue chip: Highly popular assets that are known to be valuable, stable, and liquid. Example: Bored Apes Yacht Club by Yuga Labs.

Gas: The fee you need to pay in order to make a transaction or perform a certain action on a particular blockchain.

Gas war: When a highly anticipated collection launches and the number of buyers exceeds the amount of NFTs, people start increasing their gas fee hoping that their transaction will go through faster than the others’.

Secondary market: A market like OpenSea where you can trade their assets with other investors rather than buying from a company/creator directly.

Delist: Cancelling the listing of an NFT for sale from an open market.

Derivative: An alternative project derived from another popular project. For example, the Society of Derivative Apes (SODA) is a project derived from BAYC and Doodles.

Floor: The lowest price you can buy an NFT of a given project is called its ‘floor’ or ‘floor price.’

Fractional ownership: Sometimes a seller sells just some percentage of the whole asset, giving the buyer partial ownership rights.

Liquidity: The ability of an asset to be easily converted into fiat or other tokens.

Minting: Creating an NFT.

Burning: Destroying an NFT by sending it to a “burn address” - a public address that’s not accessible by anyone and is used to get rid of assets.

Bridge: A connection used to transfer assets or data from one chain to another. It usually charges some fee.

Smart Contract: Self-executing contract that defines an NFT's rules.

Metadata: Descriptive information about an NFT, like creator and ownership history.

Now that you know what these popular NFT terms mean and where they’re used, you’ve become an NFT native. Meaning that you can now understand and communicate with other NFT folks easily and effectively.