Research · Trading Glossary
Trading Glossary
Plain-English definitions of the trading terms that start with I.
I
- Iceberg Order
- A large order that displays only a portion of its size at a time.
- Idempotency Key
- A unique identifier ensuring that a repeated API request is processed only once, preventing duplicate transfers.
- Immutability
- The practical inability to alter confirmed historical records. In public blockchains this is economic rather than absolute: rewriting history is possible but prohibitively expensive.
- Immutable Contract
- A contract that cannot be changed after deployment.
- Impermanent Loss (Divergence Loss)
- The shortfall a liquidity provider experiences relative to simply holding the assets, arising when the pooled assets' relative prices diverge. The loss becomes permanent upon withdrawal.
- Impersonation Scam
- Fraud conducted through accounts imitating official brands, executives, or support channels.
- Implementation Contract (Logic Contract)
- The contract containing the executable logic behind a proxy.
- Implied Volatility
- The volatility expectation embedded in options prices.
- Improvement Proposal (EIP / BIP / xIP)
- The standardized document format for proposing protocol changes.
- In-Game Asset Interoperability
- The ability to use owned digital items across multiple applications.
- Inactivity Leak
- A mechanism gradually reducing the stake of offline validators when the chain cannot finalize, restoring finality over time.
- Incident Response Plan
- The documented procedure for detecting, containing, and recovering from a security event, including internal escalation and external communication.
- Inclusion List
- A proposed mechanism obliging block builders to include specified valid transactions, protecting censorship resistance.
- Indexer
- Infrastructure that reads chain data and structures it for fast querying by applications.
- Inflation Rate
- The annualized rate of supply growth.
- Initial Coin Offering (ICO)
- A public token sale conducted directly by a project. Now heavily constrained by regulation in most jurisdictions.
- Initial DEX Offering (IDO)
- A token launch conducted through a decentralized exchange or launchpad.
- Initial Exchange Offering (IEO)
- A token sale conducted through an exchange, which performs due diligence and handles distribution.
- Initial Liquidity
- The capital seeded into trading pools at launch, determining early market depth.
- Initial Margin
- The collateral required to open a leveraged position.
- Inscriptions
- Data written into Bitcoin transactions using the Ordinals convention.
- Insider Threat
- Risk originating from individuals with legitimate access.
- Institutional
- Professional entities: funds, treasuries, banks, and corporates.
- Institutional DeFi
- Permissioned deployments of DeFi mechanisms operating within compliance perimeters and among verified participants.
- Insurance Fund
- A venue-maintained reserve absorbing losses from liquidations that close below bankruptcy price.
- Insurance Protocol
- Coverage products protecting against smart contract failure, depegs, or custodial loss.
- Integer Overflow / Underflow
- Arithmetic wrapping past a type's bounds. Mitigated by default in modern Solidity versions.
- Intent
- A declaration of a desired outcome ("I want at least X of asset B for asset A") rather than a specified execution path. Competing solvers then determine how to fulfil it.
- Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC)
- A standardized, light-client-based messaging protocol used across the Cosmos ecosystem.
- Interest Rate Model
- The formula setting borrow and supply rates as a function of utilization, typically with a kink beyond which rates rise steeply to protect withdrawal liquidity.
- Internal Ledger
- The off-chain accounting system tracking customer balances, which for a custodial business is distinct from on-chain state.
- Interoperability
- The capacity of distinct blockchain networks to exchange assets and messages.
- Invariant Testing
- Testing that asserts properties which must always hold, regardless of input sequence.
- IPFS (InterPlanetary File System)
- A content-addressed distributed storage protocol widely used for NFT assets. Content addressing guarantees integrity but not permanence — files must be actively pinned.
- Isolated Margin
- Margin mode in which collateral is assigned to a single position, capping loss to that allocation.
- Issuance
- The rate at which new native tokens are created by the protocol.
- Issuer
- The entity that creates and, where applicable, redeems a token — most relevant for stablecoins and tokenized securities.