Glossary
Words, in plain language
What a recovery phrase is, why gas costs money, what a Tor circuit does. The terms you meet in a crypto wallet, kept short.
All terms
- Address
- The public string you share to receive coins. Safe to give out, though it can link your activity on a public blockchain.
- Address poisoning
- A scam that plants a lookalike address in your history so you copy it by mistake. How to spot it.
- Approval
- Permission you give a contract to move a token from your account. Kyro approves the exact amount by default. An unlimited approval needs an explicit action and shows a warning.
- APY
- Annual percentage yield: a yearly rate of return, with compounding. In Kyro every APY is an estimate, never a promise.
- BIP39
- The standard that turns a random number into 12 or 24 English words. It is why a phrase can move between wallets.
- Blind signing
- Approving a transaction your hardware wallet cannot decode. The device shows raw data, so it protects your keys but not your consent.
- Blockchain
- A shared public record of transactions, kept by many computers.
- Clear mode
- Kyro with Tor turned off. Servers see your IP address. You can only reach it by confirming in a system window.
- Custodial wallet
- A wallet where a company holds the keys for you. You trust it to give your coins back. Kyro is not one.
- Decoy
- In Monero, other outputs mixed with your real one when you send, so an observer cannot tell which was spent.
- Depeg
- When a token meant to track another asset, such as a stablecoin or stETH, drifts from its target price.
- Derivation path
- The recipe that turns a phrase into a specific key. Two wallets using different paths show different addresses for the same phrase.
- Epoch
- A fixed period on a proof-of-stake network. Staking changes often take effect at an epoch boundary.
- Exit relay
- The last Tor relay, which connects to the server. The server sees its IP address instead of yours.
- Fail closed
- Stopping when a protection is missing, rather than carrying on without it. If Tor is down, Kyro sends nothing.
- Gas
- The fee for running a transaction on Ethereum and similar networks. It goes to the network, not to Kyro.
- Hardware wallet
- A small device that keeps your keys and signs on its own screen. Ledger and Trezor in Kyro.
- Lending
- Depositing tokens in a protocol such as Aave so borrowers can use them, for a variable rate. Contract risk applies.
- Liquid staking
- Staking through a protocol such as Lido that gives you a token, stETH, standing for your stake.
- Network fee
- What you pay the blockchain to process a transaction. It is separate from any Kyro fee.
- Node
- A computer that keeps a copy of a blockchain and answers questions about it. Running your own means no third party sees your lookups.
- Non-custodial wallet
- A wallet where you alone hold the keys. Nobody can freeze your funds or recover them for you.
- Onion service
- A server reachable only inside Tor, so no exit relay is involved. Kyro uses one for Bitcoin lookups.
- Private key
- The secret that signs transactions. Kyro derives it for each signature in the Rust core, then wipes it from memory.
- Recovery phrase
- 12 or 24 words that restore your whole wallet. Also called a seed phrase. How to back it up.
- RPC server
- A server a wallet talks to in order to read a blockchain and broadcast transactions.
- Seed
- The secret value your keys come from. In everyday use, the same thing as your recovery phrase.
- Slashing
- A penalty that destroys part of a stake. Delegators on Solana, Cardano, TRON, NEAR, Sui and Aptos are not slashed today.
- Slippage
- The gap between the quoted swap rate and the rate you get. Your maximum slippage is the most you accept.
- Stablecoin
- A token designed to track a currency, such as USDC or USDT.
- Staking
- Supporting a proof-of-stake network with your coins in exchange for rewards. In Kyro, you delegate from your own account.
- Stake pool
- A group stake run by an operator, as on Cardano and NEAR.
- Swap
- Exchanging one coin for another from your wallet, through a provider. Kyro’s fee and the provider’s costs are included in the rate.
- Token
- An asset that lives on a blockchain, such as an ERC-20 or SPL token, as opposed to the chain’s native coin.
- Tor
- A network that hides your IP address by routing traffic through volunteer relays. How Kyro uses it.
- Tor circuit
- The path of three relays a connection takes through Tor. Kyro keeps a separate one for each blockchain family.
- Validator
- A computer that helps run a proof-of-stake network and earns rewards. It cannot spend what you delegate.
- View key
- A Monero key that reads incoming payments but cannot spend. In Kyro it stays on your machine.
- xpub
- An extended public key. It can show all addresses of an account, but cannot spend. Kyro stores xpubs for hardware accounts.
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