Definitions for crypto and AI-agent terminology — every entry is a self-contained answer for AI search engines and human readers. Each page emits DefinedTerm + Article + FAQPage schema so generative engines can lift definitions verbatim into their answers.

The glossary covers four overlapping themes: protocols (MCP, tool calls, x402, agent skills), safety (honeypots, rugpulls, MEV), DeFi mechanics (TVL, DEX aggregators, funding rates, realized volatility, account abstraction), and data semantics (fetched_at, credits and rate limits).

All terms

Account abstraction (ERC-4337) — Account abstraction (ERC-4337) is the Ethereum standard that lets smart contracts act as user wallets — replacing externally-owned accounts (EOAs) with programmable smart-contract wallets. AA enables gas sponsorship (paymasters), batched transactions, social recovery, custom signature schemes, and one-click onboarding without seed phrases.
Agent skill — An agent skill is a self-contained installable package — typically following the agentskills.io specification — that gives an AI agent built-in knowledge of a specific API, service, or workflow. Skills install via `npx skills add <repo>` and integrate with Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, and any skill-compatible agent.
Credits and rate limits — In a usage-based API like Hive Intelligence, a credit is the unit of consumption (typically one credit per tool call) and a rate limit is the maximum requests allowed per minute. Together they define both the monthly volume budget and the per-second throughput an agent can use — Hive plans range from 10,000 credits at 30 req/min (Demo) to unlimited credits at 3,000 req/min (Enterprise).
DEX aggregator — A DEX aggregator is a smart-contract router that splits a single swap across multiple decentralized exchanges (Uniswap, Curve, Balancer, Pancakeswap, Raydium, Jupiter, etc.) to deliver the best execution price for the user — minimizing slippage, avoiding shallow pools, and routing around price impact in real time.
fetched_at — fetched_at is the timestamp Hive Intelligence attaches to every tool response — recording the exact ISO-8601 moment the underlying data was retrieved from the upstream provider. AI agents read fetched_at to ground answers in real freshness rather than relying on training-cutoff knowledge that may be months or years stale.
Funding rate — A funding rate is the periodic payment exchanged between long and short holders of a perpetual futures contract — typically every 8 hours on Binance, Bybit, OKX, Hyperliquid. Positive funding means longs pay shorts; negative funding means shorts pay longs. The rate is the mechanism that pulls the perpetual contract's mark price toward the underlying spot price.
Honeypot token — A honeypot token is a smart contract that allows buyers to acquire the token but prevents them from selling it — by reverting sell transactions, charging extreme sell taxes, or using transfer-restriction logic. Funds are trapped, locked to the contract, and recoverable only by the deployer.
MCP for Crypto — MCP for crypto is the Model Context Protocol applied to cryptocurrency data — an open standard that gives AI agents structured, discoverable, runtime access to live prices, DeFi activity, wallet positions, token security signals, and on-chain data through one normalized tool surface, instead of hand-wiring every provider API.
MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) — MEV — Maximal Extractable Value (formerly Miner Extractable Value) — is the profit a block proposer, builder, or searcher can extract by including, reordering, or excluding transactions in a block. It is the protocol-level value capture that exists because block ordering is privileged. Common MEV strategies: sandwich attacks, arbitrage, liquidations, front-running.
Polymarket — Polymarket is the largest crypto-native prediction market platform — users buy and sell binary outcome shares on real-world events (elections, sports, crypto prices, geopolitics), denominated in USDC. Settled prices function as an aggregated probability estimate; the platform processed over $3.3B in election bets during the 2024 US presidential cycle.
Realized volatility — Realized volatility (RV) is the standard deviation of an asset's actual price returns over a historical window — typically annualized. It measures observed past variation, distinct from implied volatility (IV), which is the market's forward-looking estimate derived from option prices. RV-vs-IV divergence is the core signal in volatility-arbitrage strategies.
Rugpull — A rugpull is a coordinated exit-scam in which the deployer of a cryptocurrency or DeFi project withdraws liquidity, mints unbacked supply, or transfers contract ownership to an unrecoverable address — collapsing token value and leaving holders with worthless balances.
Tool call — A tool call is the runtime invocation of a tool function by an AI agent — a JSON-RPC request that names the tool, supplies validated arguments matching the tool's input schema, and returns a structured result the agent can reason over. In MCP, tool calls are made via the standard tools/call method.
TVL (Total Value Locked) — TVL — Total Value Locked — is the aggregate dollar value of cryptocurrency assets deposited in a DeFi protocol's smart contracts at a given moment. It is the standard measure of a protocol's economic activity, used by AI agents and analysts to gauge protocol health, yield sustainability, and whale concentration.
x402 — x402 is Coinbase's open standard for stablecoin pay-per-request payments over HTTP — repurposing the long-defunct HTTP 402 status code (Payment Required) into an active payment protocol. Agents call an API; the server responds with 402 plus a payment challenge; the agent sends a USDC payment; the server returns the data. No account, API key, or subscription required.