Glossary

APR (Annual Percent Rate): refers to a yearly interest generated by the sum charged to borrowers or paid to investors. It is not compounded, which is why it is always lower than the APY.

APY: it is the APR but with compounding effects into consideration. It is also called the real returns.

Bridge: An application that allows a token to be transferred between two blockchains.

Collateral: a token used to secure a loan. It provides a safety net to the lender.

Cross-chain: refers to applications or functionalities that involve two or more blockchains. E.g., in Interest Protocol a user will be able to provide collateral in Ethereum and borrow in BSC.

DApp: Decentralized application.

DEX: Decentralized exchange. An automated broker to trade ERC20 tokens.

ERC20: It is the interface of all cryptocurrencies issued in EVM blockchains. It is what allows tokens to be transferred and work with DApps.

EVM: Ethereum Virtual Machine. Learn more about it here.

EIP: Ethereum Improvement Proposals. Learn more about it here.

Farm: A contract that rewards a depositor a token as long as he deposits a token on it. E.g., it is usually used for a way to pay users that deposit LP Tokens.

Finality: How long a user must wait to consider the transaction confirmed.

Isolated Markets: Protocols like Compound use one single pool, which means that any collateral can be used to borrow any asset in the pool. In an isolated architecture, the protocol consists of many pools. Therefore, Collateral A on Pool A cannot be used to borrow assets in Pool B; thus, it isolates Collateral A risk to Pool A, keeping pool B unexposed.

Keepers: An automated system to call contract functions. It is used for maintenance, such as maintaining the right leverage amount in the Dinero Venus Vault.

Lending Protocol: A DApp that facilitates loans between users.

Liquidation: When a loan is underwater, a third party can close the position by repaying the loan to the lender using a portion of the collateral deposited by the borrower. It usually comes with a penalty fee for the borrower.

LP (Token): Liquidity provider tokens are receipt tokens given for users who deposit 2 tokens in DEXs, thus providing a swap market for other users. E.g., when a user deposits BNB/ETH in PCS. He is giving liquidity for other users to trade BNB and ETH. In exchange, PCS gives them LP Tokens that represent his/her deposit.

LTV (Loan-to-value-ratio): Amount borrowed divided by the collateral supplied in USD.

Mantissa: The number of significant digits to represent the quantity of a value. Learn more about it here.

MasterChef: Famous multi-asset staking contract popularized by Sushi Swap.

Maturity Date: refers to the date that a loan must be repaid to avoid penalties.

NFT: Non-fungible token. They are unique tokens.

Oracle: A contract that is able to collect data from the outside world to be used by DApps inside the blockchain. The most famous oracle network is Chainlink.

Pair Lending Market: A lending market consisting of two cryptocurrencies. E.g., In the case of Dinero markets, one is used for collateral and the other for borrows. But in other designs, both of them can be used as collateral and borrows.

PCS: Pancake Swap. The leading DEX in Binance Smart Chain.

Pool: refers to a contract that accepts an ERC20 token and rewards for another token. It is similar to a farm but it is meant for non LP tokens. It is usually to incentivize holding or for marketing purposes. E.g., in PCS, a user can deposit Cake to earn more Cake.

Over-collateralized Loans: Unlike bank or credit loans, in which credit scores and other factors determine how much one can borrow, over-collateralized allow borrowers to borrow a percentage (the LTV - always below 100%) equivalent to their collateral. They allow borrowers to pursue long/short investment positions or attain quick liquidity without losing their portfolio positions.

P2P (Peer-to-Peer): A contract that connects a user directly to another user. Most lending schemas involve a user to interact with many users via pools. P2P has no pool or other intermediary in the middle. It purely acts as a way to enforce the agreed terms.

Rebase Token: A cryptocurrency that has an elastic supply. It can reduce or increase the balance of every user based on an algorithm. It is usually used to reward users or used to artificially increase the USD value per token.

Solvent: Having assets in excess of liabilities; Being able to pay one's debts.

Stablecoin: A cryptocurrency that is pegged to a FIAT currency, usually the American Dollar, USD.

Staking: The act of depositing a token in a contract to earn a bonus. It can be voting power, a token, etc... It is usually used when a user deposits in a pool and the term farming is used when a user deposits in a farm.

Supply (Lending): It is the act of depositing tokens in a Lending Protocol to be lent out to other users for a fee.

Synthetic: A cryptocurrency that pegs its value to a real-world asset through clever financial incentives. E.g., mTSLA issued by Mirror Protocol pegs to 1 share of Tesla Stock.

TPS: Transactions per second. A blockchain speed must take into account the TPS and finality.

TWAP (Time-Weighted Average Price): is an asset's average price over a predetermined period of time. They are an effective measure to prevent price manipulations.

TX: Transaction. It is anything that can change the blockchain state.

Underwater Position: A position in which the LTV is above the maximum LTV of the market. It happens when the collateral price depreciates and makes the position open for liquidation.

Vault: A contract that applies an investment strategy to funds collected from users. It lowers investment costs by distributing the transaction costs among all users and requires no active maintenance by depositors to execute the strategy.

vToken: A rebase token that represents an amount of underlying Token in Venus. The name was borrowed from Compound that uses cEther. E.g., vBTC represents an amount of BTC a user has supplied to Venus.

Wrapped Token: A token that holds another token (the wrapped token) and provides extra functionalities to interact with it. The most popular use case is to wrap a blockchain's native currencies such as ETH and BNB to give them ERC20 functionalities to interact with DApps easily.

IPX: Interest Protocol token, a token that is rewarded to liquidity providers to ensure that our DEX has enough liquidity to operate.