Trading Glossary

W

WAGMI / NGMI

"We're all gonna make it" / "not gonna make it."

Wallet

Software or hardware that stores private keys and constructs signed transactions. A wallet does not hold assets; assets remain on-chain and the wallet holds the authority to move them.

Wallet Drainer

Malicious software or a malicious signature request designed to empty a wallet in a single approval.

War Room

The coordinated response team assembled during an active incident.

Warm Wallet

An intermediate tier: offline keys with defined, controlled procedures for periodic signing. Common in institutional treasury operations.

Weak Subjectivity

The requirement that a node syncing from scratch obtain a recent trusted checkpoint to identify the correct chain.

Webhook

An HTTP callback notifying a system of an event such as a confirmed deposit.

Wei

The smallest denomination of ETH: one quintillionth (10⁻¹⁸) of an ETH.

Whale

A holder large enough for their activity to influence the market.

Whale Watching

Monitoring large addresses for signals about upcoming market activity.

White Hat / Black Hat / Grey Hat

Ethical, malicious, and ambiguously motivated security researchers respectively.

Whitepaper

The foundational technical and economic document describing a protocol's design and rationale.

Withdrawal Delay / Time Lock

An enforced waiting period between requesting and executing a withdrawal or configuration change, providing a window to detect and halt unauthorized activity.

Withdrawal Queue

The processing pipeline for outbound transfers, typically incorporating batching, review, and approval steps.

Wrapped Asset

A token on the destination chain representing an asset held on the source chain. Its value depends entirely on the integrity of the bridge that issued it.

Wrapped Token

A token on one chain representing an asset held or locked elsewhere — for example WBTC on Ethereum, or WETH, which wraps native ETH into an ERC-20-compliant form.