NFTs, Investing, Tech

Terminology of the NFT Space — Aping, Mooning, Rugging, Paperhands, Diamondhands, LFG

A handy glossary for newbies!

New to the NFT space? Don’t worry; you’re not alone. But, you’ll definitely start reading and hearing terms that you may not have encountered before. Some are particular to the NFT world and others are imported from other related industries. Let’s look at some and get you up to speed!

• “1/1” — A “one of one” or “1/1” is a unique piece of art. A “1/1” can be a standalone NFT (e.g., a unique creation by a digital artist), or it can also be a super rare 1/1 inserted into a larger generative set. (Although, technically, all items within a larger generative set are generally also unique. We just don’t usually call normal members of generative sets 1/1s.)
• “Ape” — This term, often used as a verb, is particular to the NFT world. It refers to the Bored Ape Yacht Club, one of the blue chip OG generative NFT sets (arguably the gold standard among NFT drops, with top-quality, whimsical generative art and insanely high values per NFT). People use the term in different ways. As a verb — to ape, or to ape into — it can mean “to buy,” “to buy in early,” “to rise in value.” But, it’s flexible, too. One might say, “Wow, that’s gonna be an ape-level drop!”
• “Diamondhands” — These are the NFT owners who hold for the long term. They’re in it for the long-haul and believe in the massive payout ahead.
• “Discord” — Home of 99% of NFT drop communities. Yes, they do Twitter and (less often) Instagram or somewhere else. But all of the action is on Discord, IMHO.
• “Drop” — A drop is an NFT sale. It can be a noun, as in “that’s was an awesome drop!” Or a verb, as in “When does that set drop?”
• “DYOR” — Do Your Own Research. Just because someone you know and maybe even respect says to buy, that doesn’t mean that you should do so. Don’t blindly follow anyone in the NFT space. (Well, okay, unless GaryVee says to buy, in which case a set’s gonna sell out. lol, jk.)
• “Floor” — The floor, or floor price, is the lowest price that an NFT (usually within a larger set) can be purchased. NFT buyers watch the floor like hawks, and it’s common to have dedicated channels within project Discords devoted to analyzing the floor — why it’s where it is, where it’s going, where it was before, etc. People talk about the floor price in general, and they also talk about the floor of subsets of a drop. For example, the floor price today for the Bored Apes is 34 ETH. But the floor price for a “Trippy”-furred ape is 175 ETH.
• “FOMO” — Fear Of Missing Out. This is a psychological phenomenon that kicks in at various times and influences buyer behavior. It’s often used as a verb: “Oh, you FOMO’d into that one!” In the NFT world, just think of it as making a purchase out of fear that a project will moon (see below) and you’ll miss out on the rewards.
• “Fren” — Friend. One of a handful of common child-like spellings you’ll see. Usage of these types of words is super common in the NFT space. But, I have to admit that, as a writer, I’m not a giant fan of these words.
• “FUD” — Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. It’s everywhere, often spread purposely by those looking to troll an NFT drop or market for some reason. I’ve seen this get really ugly and takeover an otherwise healthy discussion, and even more or less ruin a drop. The best way to prevent and/or quiet FUD is via active mods in your Discord, and of course by attracting positive community members.
• “Gas” — This is the fee users pay on the Ethereum network for the required computing power to handle their requested transactions. Gas for small transactions that require few resources (like sending ETH) are generally low (a few dollars), whereas gas for more complex transactions (such as NFT purchases or transfers) are more (sometimes $50, $100, $150, or even more during a gas war).
• “Gas War” — When a set gets popular, and thousands of buyers flock to a minting page at the same time to grab NFTs, this causes Ethereum gas wars, a phenomenon that drives gas ETH prices way up (and thus it’s a “war” for users trying to get their NFTs but also without being gouged with exorbitant fees). Yes, my company has caused a few of these. Sorry.
• “Generative Set” — A generative NFT set is one in which the images are programmatically generated. Again, see the Bored Ape Yacht Club for a typical example. Typically, these sets contain various asset classes (in the case of Bored Apes, it’s Backgrounds, Clothes, Earrings, Eyes, Fur, Hats, and Mouths). Within each asset class there are numerous traits, some of which are more rare than others. In the case of the Bored Apes there are 8 different Backgrounds, 43 different Clothes, 6 different Earrings, 23 different Eyes, 19 different Fur styles, 36 different Hats, and 33 different Mouths. Those are then run through an algorithm to produce unique permutations from the above list, based on what’s called a rarity table (which controls the distribution of traits). (BTW, if you want to DO a generative set, that’s exactly what my business — GenerativeNFTs.io — does! Here’s more info on that.)
• “IPFS” — This is the Inter-Planetary File System, a decentralized file storage system typically used by NFT drops for storing the images and metadata for a drop. The key here is that it’s decentralized, meaning it’s not on some personal account that could disappear. Rather, it’s stored out on the Internet in public nodes that get copied and should theoretically live on regardless of whether Bob the developer paid his hosting bill that month.
• “LFG” — It means Let’s Fucking Go!
• “Metadata” — An NFTs metadata is what describes the properties of the NFT, including the image itself. For example, here’s the metadata for Bored Ape #1. You can see that it points to the IPFS for the image (here) and that it’s got a grin, Vietnam jacket, orange background, blue beam eyes, and robot fur (and all of that matches up with the image). Sites like OpenSea use the metadata to be able to allow users to filter collections. (For example, to see all apes with “Blue Beams” eyes, go here.)
• “Mint” — An NFT is minted when it’s written to the blockchain. Thus, a buyer can claim that he or she has minted an NFT by purchasing one. There’s also a bit of confusion about this term because of some technicalities. Opensea, for example, offers gasless minting or lazy minting, which are terms they use to describe NFTs that have been created and prepped for sale, but may not technically be deemed true NFTs just yet (in my opinion). Personally, I don’t consider an NFT minted until it’s truly on the blockchain. And that’s not the case with the gasless / lazy minting. But, as soon as someone purchases them, they indeed become minted. Still, IDK if others consider this distinction, and so there may be a general use of the word mint to indicate that an NFT is created and available for sale.
• “Moon” — To moon is a verb. It means to hit that ever-elusive valuation for an NFT that everyone hopes for. With their 34 ETH floor, Bored Apes definitely mooned. For other projects, the term may be more subjective. Pudgy Penguins has a 1.28 floor. Did it moon? Kinda-sorta. Cool Cats has a 5.8 ETH floor. Did that one moon? Sure, I’d say so. Can a project that already mooned moon again? Or moon further? Sure, why not. (See “wen” below, btw.)
• “NFT” — Think of them as digital assets that can be owned. They’re like trading cards in digital form. Many people can look at them, or even “right click / save as” them, but only one person (usually, if it’s a 1/1 or a member of a generative set) can own it, and that can be proven because it’s on the blockchain.
• “Opensea” — It’s a giant marketplace for NFTs. It’s not the only one, but it’s currently the largest. It’s where people buy and sell NFTs. (Though, importantly, when people mint NFTs in the first place, that’s generally not done via Opensea at all. Drops generally have their own minting web sites for that!)
• “Paperhands”— These are the people who buy into an NFT project, but then sell too quickly — either taking a minimal gain or possibly even a loss because they may be nervous about the project being a rug, or because of online FUD being spread.
• “PFP”— Sometimes “picture for proof,” but I usually think “profile pic” (the latter being more common, but perhaps making less sense as an acronym). It’s a common style of NFT drop, typically in the generative set world, in which the NFTs feature a character, usually facing forward, suitable for use online as an avatar.
• “Prereveal” — During an NFT drop, there’s quite often a span of time between when the sale happens and when the final images actually show up on OpenSea. This is the “prereveal” period. During this time, a prereveal image (think of it as a temporary image) shows when users go to their wallets and take a look (e.g., when they login to OpenSea and look at their profiles, which shows what they just bought). Drops generally do this on purpose, and for a few reasons. First, if the drop were to show the actual images upon purchase, savvy users could potentially look ahead at the set’s metadata and know when super rare items were coming, and then snipe them. At least, that was the initial purpose of prerevealing. But there’s more to it. Allowing the metadata to be seen prior to a sale’s end opens up the world to fraud (as bots could collect all images and metadata from the set and easily launch a copy of the set as a scam). Also, the practice has evolved now into a whole other market-run phenomenon, which is the prereveal secondary market — that period of time between the primary sale and the reveal during which speculators often run the price up in a frenzy.
• “Presale” — The presale is a part of the primary sale, generally a time set aside for early adopters and other whitelisted people to come to a mint page and purchase NFTs. It’s done both as a courtesy, a reward or thank-you gesture (to ensure that these people actually get NFTs — which may not be otherwise guaranteed in the case of a massively popular drop), and/or simply as a measure to mitigate gas wars.
• “Primary Sale” — The primary sale is the initial sale period of an NFT drop. This typically takes place at a minting page on the drop’s web site.
• “Rare” — In generative NFT sets, some NFTs are more rare than others because the NFTs are made up of asset classes and traits that are programmed to be more rare (and thus occur less frequently than the rest). Once the NFTs are generated and sold, outside services like Rarity.Tools, Rarity Sniffer and others will crunch all of the metadata numbers, analyzing the percentage of traits that show up (and other factors) ultimately landing on a hierarchy of rarity within a set. Those NFTs within the set that rank higher are generally considered more valuable (although some investors may consider aesthetics as well, which can differ wildly from what the rankings show).
• “Reveal” — Technically speaking, the “reveal” is when a drop changes the metadata pointer on their smart contract, which has the effect of changing the images for an NFT set (thus finally revealing the actual image and property data after a prereveal period). It’s always a fun time, and a good time to be in a drop’s Discord to watch the reactions.
• “Roadmap” — The roadmap has become an essential element of an NFT drop’s existence. Basically, this outlines what’s going to happen down the line for a project. In the early days, before 10-minute sellouts were much of a thing, it was typical to see roadmaps that said things like “At 10% sales, we’re going to do X. At 25% sales, we’re going to do Y. At 50% sales, we’re going to do Z.” But I sense that sort of thing is going away for a few reasons. First, nowadays, a sale can sell out in minutes or hours, and thus it’s pointless to set yourself up to do some huge activity at 10% sold, and then another at 20% sold. You’re not going to launch at noon, hire a developer to start sketching out a video game at 12:15 p.m., and then have that game in beta testing by 1:00 p.m. And furthermore, the NFT space has unfortunately evolved into such an investment-centric world that, if a project does not sell out in a day, it becomes a massive perception issue. That all said, while you probably don’t need the “10%, 20%, 30%” style roadmap, you likely DO want some sort of plan showing what you’re going to do — both with funds generated and just in general as time goes on. I’ll say also that, quite commonly these days there’s some sort of charitable component to NFT drops. (One of our own clients has one coming up for which he’s donating a whopping 70% of the primary sale to charity!)
• “Rug” — This is when a drop team “pulls the rug out” on a project. For example, maybe they promised all sorts of great developments, activities, and community benefits post-drop but, after the ETH rolled in, they just took the ETH and ran. That would be a rug. They rugged the project. You got rugged. Not good. Sadly common.
• “Secondary Market” — This is all of the buying and selling that goes on after the primary sale. Basically, this is everything you see, all of the trading, going on with generative sets on Opensea. The Bored Apes have done 200k ETH in secondary market activity. That’s $900+ million.
• “Sellout” — Ha, and you thought this term was only for rock-and-roll bands who went mainstream? Nah, it means that a generative NFT set has sold out, indicating a massive success. And btw, this can happen in minutes, hours, days, weeks, or longer. In my book, a sellout is a sellout. There’s no shame in a drop making $2 million in months versus minutes, though the market may say otherwise.
• “Smart Contract”— The smart contract is the code that lives on the blockchain and governs the NFT sale — allowing for certain functionality such as minting — and keeps various other important information such as the metadata address for the NFTs. The code is unchangeable once deployed, although some things (if coded for) can be updated via interactions with the contract.
• “Sweep the Floor” — To sweep the floor is to purchase NFTs from a set at floor price. This is often done by investors who believe in a project and wish to purchase additional NFTs from a set while also helping to raise the floor price (because, if they and others buy up the lowest-price NFTs, the floor price naturally rises, which can positively affect the perception of value a set has).
• “Utility Token” — Some NFTs are not merely JPGs (or PNGs, as the case may be). Some have utility, such as granting digital access to web sites or Discord groups, or even real-life access to events. (VeeFriends does this a lot.)
• “Verified Contract” — “Verified” does not necessarily mean “good” like it sounds. But, a verified contract is one where you can actually read, study, and audit, the code, thus making it considerably safer to trust, as it’s now auditable by third-parties. It seems like months ago, having a verified contract publicly available was a must for drops. And I still think savvy investors like this. But, some drops are choosing not to verify, ostensibly for security reasons. I believe MekaVerse did not verify (at least not during their primary sale). That said, I recommend drops verify pre-sale and make the contract available for inspection.
• “Wen” — When. It’s common for people to ask “wen moon?” (“When will this NFT set skyrocket in value?”) or “web lambo?” (“When will I be able to sell this NFT and afford a Lamborghini?”). See my comments on “fren” above.
• “WGMI” — We’re Gonna Make It. Well, unless you aren’t, in which cast you’re NGMI (though I haven’t included that one here).
• “Whitelist” — A whitelist is a group of wallet addresses to which access is granted to a presale. People love to ape in early, get on the whitelist, mint their tokens, and hope they moon.

What else am I missing? Drop me a line anytime and I’ll update this list!