DeFi & DEX Glossary

Decentralized exchange where peers trade directly on-chain without intermediaries.

Decentralized finance—financial services built on blockchain without banks.

Automated Market Maker using liquidity pools and formulas to price assets.

Available token depth that lets trades execute without large price moves.

Difference between expected and executed price due to movement or low liquidity.

Sending a swap through several pools/tokens to improve the final rate.

Hyperliquid’s on-chain perps and spot order book engine with fast finality.

EVM-compatible layer on Hyperliquid enabling smart contracts and DeFi apps.

Platform that combines liquidity from many DEXs to find the best execution.

How much a trade moves market price; higher with big orders or low depth.

Total Value Locked—assets deposited in a protocol; a size/health metric.

On-chain code that self-executes agreements without intermediaries.

Hyperliquid’s BFT consensus optimized for high throughput and fast finality.

Hypertrade’s routing engine combining multi-market and multi-hop execution.

Exchanging one token for another via a DEX or aggregator.

Merging quotes from multiple venues to reduce slippage and improve rates.

User-set max acceptable slippage before a trade auto-reverts.

Pre-trade path testing (e.g., Invisium) to guarantee accurate quotes.

List of bids/asks used for price discovery in order-book DEXs.

Smart contract reserves that power AMM swaps and earn fees for LPs.

LP value difference vs holding tokens, caused by price divergence.

Tool to transfer assets between chains or ecosystems.

Network fee to execute on-chain transactions.

Fast-path execution route prioritizing speed over path complexity.

Data feed providing external or cross-market prices to smart contracts.

Malicious reordering of transactions for profit; mitigated with protections.

Miner/validator Extractable Value from ordering or inserting transactions.

State becomes irreversible within a single block, reducing settlement risk.

Order to buy/sell at a specific price or better.

Spot trades the asset directly; perps are perpetual futures without expiry.