Meme Coin Glossary: Every Term on This Site, Explained Plainly

The guides and reviews on this site use a specific vocabulary that's easy to skim past without really understanding. This page defines every term we use, in plain language, so nothing here depends on already knowing the jargon.

Bonding curve

A pricing formula, used by most launchpads, where a token's price rises automatically as more people buy it and falls as they sell, using pooled funds rather than a traditional order book. Pons and pump.fun both price new tokens this way before they graduate to open trading.

Bridging

Moving assets from one blockchain, or one blockchain layer, to another, since a token can't simply move on its own. Getting ETH onto Robinhood Chain to use Pons, for example, means bridging it over from Arbitrum.

Contract address

The unique on-chain address a specific token lives at. It's the only reliable way to identify a token, since anyone can create a new token with the same name or ticker as an existing one. Always get a contract address from a project's official source, never from a comment or a direct message.

Copy trading

A feature, offered by apps including FOMO, that lets you automatically mirror another trader's buys and sells. It looks like free access to someone else's edge, but by the time a trade appears for you to copy, you're typically already 10% to 20% late, and some heavily followed wallets are bots built specifically to bait copy traders.

Custodial wallet

A wallet where a third party, such as an exchange, holds the private keys on your behalf. Convenient, but your funds depend on that company staying solvent and honest. Most tools covered on this site use non-custodial wallets instead.

DEX / CEX

A decentralized exchange (DEX) lets you trade directly from your own wallet with no company holding your funds. A centralized exchange (CEX) is a company-run platform that typically holds custody of your funds until you withdraw. Telegram trading bots and launchpads generally route trades through DEX infrastructure.

FDV (fully diluted valuation)

A token's price multiplied by its total possible supply, including coins not yet created or unlocked, as opposed to market cap, which uses only the supply currently in circulation. FDV can make a token look far more valuable, or far more overhyped, than its current market cap alone suggests.

Gas fee

The fee paid to a blockchain's network to process a transaction, separate from any fee the app or bot itself charges. FOMO markets itself as gasless, meaning it absorbs this cost instead of charging it to you separately.

Gasless

A design where an app covers a transaction's underlying network fee for you, so you don't need to separately hold that network's native token just to pay for gas.

Graduation

The point at which a token launched on a bonding curve has raised enough funds to move to full, open trading. On Pons, that threshold is 4.2 ETH; only about 1.1% to 1.55% of launches ever reach it.

Insider wallet

A wallet that appears to have early or superior information about a token's price moves, often followed closely by copy traders. Some are legitimately well-informed. Others exist specifically to bait copy traders into providing the exit liquidity their operator needs.

KYC (know your customer)

Identity verification a financial service requests, usually a photo ID or similar document. Many meme-coin trading apps skip KYC for spot trading but still require it at the point where fiat currency enters the system, such as a card deposit.

Launchpad

A platform for creating and trading brand-new tokens from the moment they exist, usually priced through a bonding curve. Pons, pump.fun, and Stonkfun are all launchpads, each on a different chain.

Layer 2 (L2)

A blockchain built on top of another one (its "Layer 1") to process transactions faster and more cheaply while still settling back to the base chain for security. Robinhood Chain, which Pons runs on, is an Ethereum Layer 2.

Liquidity / liquidity pool

The pool of funds that lets a token actually be bought and sold. Thin liquidity means even a modest trade can move the price significantly, and it can make it hard to sell a position at all.

Meme coin

A cryptocurrency created around a joke, trend, or cultural reference rather than a specific technical use case. Meme coins can still be legitimately traded and can gain real value, but the category is defined by cultural momentum rather than utility, and most individual meme coins ultimately go to zero.

Non-custodial wallet

A wallet where you, not a third party, hold the private keys, so no company can freeze or move your funds unilaterally. FOMO issues one automatically at signup, built on wallet infrastructure from Privy.

Perpetual futures (perps)

A derivative contract that lets you bet on a token's price with leverage and no expiration date, rather than owning the token itself. Perps carry the risk of losing more than your initial deposit and are restricted in many jurisdictions. FOMO, for instance, doesn't offer them to US persons.

Private key / seed phrase

The secret that proves ownership of a non-custodial wallet. Anyone who has it can move your funds, and it can never be recovered if lost. That's why apps that hide seed-phrase management behind a simple email signup, like FOMO, are handling a real security tradeoff on your behalf.

Referral / affiliate program

A standing arrangement where an existing user shares a code or link that gives a new user a discount, while the referrer earns a percentage of that new user's activity going forward. Every platform covered on this site runs some version of this, typically paying referrers 10% to 35% of referred fees.

Rug pull

A scam where a token's creator, or a large early holder, abruptly removes liquidity or sells a huge position, crashing the price and leaving other holders with a token that can no longer be sold for meaningful value.

Slippage

The difference between the price you expected when you placed a trade and the price you actually got, caused by the market moving while the trade executes. Setting a slippage tolerance too high can let a trade cost far more than expected; setting it too low can cause the trade to fail in a fast-moving market.

Sniper bot

Automated software built to buy a brand-new token within moments of its launch, often before most people even see it. Professional sniper setups execute in around 50 milliseconds; anti-sniper rules on platforms like Pons exist specifically to limit what these bots can buy in the first few blocks.

Stock tokens

Tokenized exposure to a real-world stock, offered on some crypto platforms. FOMO offers these but restricts them in the US, Canada, the UK, and Switzerland.

Telegram trading bot

A bot that runs inside Telegram and lets you trade tokens by pasting a contract address into a chat, instead of opening a separate app or exchange. Trojan, GMGN, and BONKbot are examples. Always start from a bot's official link. Telegram has many convincing lookalike scam bots.