Glossary: every term on this site, defined once
These definitions are written to be useful rather than complete. Where a term is commonly used loosely or misleadingly in this market, the definition says so, because knowing that a word is being misapplied is often the more valuable piece of information.
How to use this glossary
Terms are grouped alphabetically below with definitions written for someone configuring a campaign rather than writing a protocol. Where a definition matters enough to have its own page, it links there. Where a term is routinely misused by vendors, the entry notes the misuse.
If you are new to this and want an order to read in: start with lamport, base fee and priority fee to understand cost, then bonding curve and graduation to understand the Pump.fun lifecycle, then maker and landed swap to understand what a campaign actually delivers. Those seven cover most of what matters.
Each of them is used with measured numbers rather than as jargon on the Solana volume bot overview and, for bonding-curve campaigns, on the Pump.fun volume bot page.
Venue names carry meaning here too, and vendors use them loosely. PumpSwap is the Pump.fun AMM a token lands on after graduation, not the curve itself. Raydium is three different pool designs sharing a brand. Meteora DLMM holds liquidity in discrete bins rather than a curve, Orca Whirlpools concentrate it into tick ranges, and Jupiter is a router across all of them rather than a venue of its own.
- Account rent
- A deposit Solana requires for an account to exist and hold data. A wallet trading a token for the first time must create a token account, which costs rent. It is recoverable by closing the account, so treat it as a deposit rather than a fee, but only if your tooling actually closes accounts afterwards.
- AMM
- Automated market maker. A pool-based exchange design where price comes from the ratio of reserves rather than from an order book. Pump.fun tokens migrate to an AMM at graduation. See Raydium routing.
- Base fee
- The fixed Solana transaction fee of 5,000 lamports per signature, which is 0.000005 SOL. Set by the protocol and unaffected by congestion. Everything above it in a fee is a priority bid you chose.
- Bonding curve
- A formula that prices a token from how much supply has been sold, requiring no counterparty because the contract always trades at the formula price. Pump.fun tokens begin here. Explained in the bonding curve page.
- Bundle
- A group of transactions submitted to execute together, in order, all or nothing, in a single block. Used to prevent anything being inserted between your transactions. Bundles carry a tip and lose entirely if they do not win inclusion.
- Bundler
- A tool that executes transactions atomically in one block, usually to control launch conditions. Frequently confused with a volume bot, which does a different job over a different time horizon. See the comparison.
- CLMM
- Concentrated liquidity market maker. A pool design where providers choose price ranges to supply liquidity into, so available depth varies sharply with price. The same trade can execute cleanly or badly depending where price sits.
- Clustering
- Analysis that links wallets into a group by shared funding sources, creation timing or behaviour. The main way coordinated fleets are identified. Treated honestly in clustering risk.
- Compute unit
- The unit Solana uses to meter execution. A transaction declares a compute limit and a price per unit, and its priority fee is the two multiplied. Requesting more compute than needed raises cost at the same bid price.
- Contention
- Competition for write access to the same account. Solana runs transactions in parallel by locking accounts, so transactions needing the same account must serialise and the losers are dropped rather than queued. The main cause of failed swaps.
- Cost per landed swap
- The fee actually paid divided by the success rate of the routing target. The only figure that makes two vendor quotes comparable, because a price per attempt is not a price per result.
- DexScreener
- An aggregator that indexes Solana pairs from chain data and displays volume, transactions, makers and liquidity. Requires no submission for basic listing. Covered in the DexScreener page.
- Graduation
- The point at which a Pump.fun token completes its bonding curve and migrates to an AMM pool. Pricing mechanics, slippage behaviour and contention all change at this moment.
- Jito
- Infrastructure providing bundle submission on Solana, where a tip buys inclusion of an atomic bundle. Used to resist sandwich attacks. Mechanics in Jito tips explained.
- Lamport
- The smallest unit of SOL. One SOL is 1,000,000,000 lamports. Fees are denominated in lamports, which is why fee figures look large until converted.
- Landed swap
- A swap that actually settled on chain, as opposed to one that was attempted. The distinction matters because failed attempts are charged in full, so attempts and results are different numbers.
- Maker
- A distinct wallet that traded a pair within a measurement window. A wallet trading repeatedly counts once, which is why maker count and trade count differ. See makers vs volume.
- Market maker
- A participant that quotes both sides of a market and commits inventory to honour those quotes, earning the spread and bearing price risk. Often used loosely by volume bot vendors to borrow credibility. See the comparison.
- MEV
- Maximal extractable value. Profit available from controlling transaction ordering, most visibly through sandwich attacks. Covered in sandwich MEV protection.
- Non-custodial
- A design in which the service never receives your private keys and therefore cannot move your funds. A structural property rather than a promise about intentions, which is why it is the only custody assurance worth much.
- Price impact
- The price movement your own trade causes against available liquidity. Not a fee and charged by nobody, but a real cost that can exceed all fees combined on thin pools or early bonding curves.
- Priority fee
- A bid, priced per compute unit, paid above the base fee to compete for inclusion when accounts are contested. The median Solana transaction pays little or none. Detail in priority fees.
- Sandwich attack
- A searcher buying immediately before your trade and selling immediately after, profiting from the price movement your own order caused. Requires a trade large enough relative to depth to be worth the effort.
- Slippage
- The difference between the price you expected and the price you received, caused by depth and by price moving between submission and execution.
- Slot
- Solana time unit of roughly 400 milliseconds, during which a leader produces a block. Contention is resolved per slot, which is why spreading trades across slots reduces failures.
- Volume
- The summed value of trades over a period. Distinct from maker count, which counts participants. Both are indexed separately by aggregators and rankings.
- Volume bot
- Software that coordinates funded wallets to place real swap transactions against a token, producing activity that chain-reading systems index. Produces visibility of activity, not demand.
- Wash trading
- Trading with oneself to create the appearance of activity without transferring real risk. Coordinated volume campaigns resemble it structurally, which is why aggregator filters and platform rankings discount profiles that look like it.
Questions
What is the difference between volume and makers?
Volume is the summed value of trades; makers is the count of distinct wallets that traded. One wallet trading 500 times and 500 wallets trading once produce identical volume and very different maker counts, and rankings weight them separately.
How many lamports are in a SOL?
One billion. Fees are denominated in lamports, so the Solana base fee of 5,000 lamports is 0.000005 SOL.
What does non-custodial actually mean?
That the service never receives your private keys and therefore has no technical ability to move your funds. It is a property of the design rather than a statement of intent, which is what makes it meaningful.
Is a volume bot the same as wash trading?
They are structurally similar in that activity is generated without transferring genuine risk between independent parties. That similarity is why aggregator filters and platform rankings discount profiles that look like it, and why we do not describe campaign activity as organic.
What is cost per landed swap?
Fee paid divided by success rate: what one settled swap actually costs once failures are accounted for. It is the figure that makes vendor quotes comparable, since quotes per attempt are not quotes per result.