Our crypto glossary: 65 terms that answer the second question too

A seed phrase is 12 or 24 words that restore every key in a wallet. That sentence is a definition, and it leaves the useful question untouched: why can no support desk bring the phrase back, and why does nobody bother trying to guess it. Our crypto glossary is built around the second question.

What one entry contains

Take the entry it comes from. After the definition it explains that the words are drawn from a fixed list defined by BIP-39, that every key is derived from that sequence and always derives to the same result, and then it does the arithmetic that settles the guessing question:

• words in the BIP-39 list: 2,048
• phrase length: 12
• entropy: 128 bits

No hardware brute-forces that, which is why phrases get taken from owners rather than cracked. The entry says so in one line.

“No support desk exists that can restore it, and anyone offering to is lying to you.”

— Intokened glossary, Seed phrase, intokened.com, updated 11 August 2026

Quote source: Intokened glossary, the Seed phrase entry, updated 11 August 2026

65 terms in nine groups

There are 65 terms, sorted into nine groups. The largest are the technical ones with 18 entries, then trading with 11 and tokens with 10, followed by wallets, DeFi, basics, slang, compliance and security. Every entry carries a category, a reading time, the short definition, expanded sections, a set of related terms someone chose by hand, and the date its own text was last rewritten. All 65 currently read 11 or 12 August 2026, because that is when the whole set was rewritten.

Most readers arrive without looking for it. When a term shows up for the first time in one of our articles it links to its entry, so the definition is one click from the sentence that needed it. Going directly works too: the list page carries an index in both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, a search box, and an expander that opens the short definition without leaving the page.

Where the crypto glossary meets you

Term pages also carry DefinedTerm markup, which matters for a reason that has nothing to do with our traffic. When an assistant answers a question about seed phrases, the marked-up definition is the passage it can lift with a source attached, and a definition without a source attached is how bad crypto advice travels.

A second glossary sits at /ai/glossary with 22 terms for the AI side of what we cover. It follows the same shape, and the two stay separate because a reader looking up a context window is not the reader looking up a liquidity pool.

The dates are the part we intend to keep honest. When a standard changes or a term drifts in usage, the entry gets rewritten and its date moves with it. If you hit a term we do not have, tell us and it goes on the list.

This piece is informational, not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset.