DeFi collateral: calculate the buffer before borrowing
Understand loan-to-value, liquidation thresholds, interest accrual, and the limits of a collateral buffer.
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AMM liquidity: what a pool position actually owns
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DEX slippage: distinguish the quote, price impact, and tolerance
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Oracle design: examine where a protocol gets its facts
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Blockchain bridges: trace the claim on both sides
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Rollups: separate execution speed from settlement guarantees
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Data availability: why a valid commitment is not enough
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Multisig wallets: a threshold is only the beginning
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Wallet backups: test recovery before you need it
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Crypto phishing: inspect the requested authority, not the urgency
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Transaction explorers: read evidence without overreading labels
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Onchain metrics: define the observation before telling a story
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Trading volume quality: inspect what was counted and where
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Market capitalization: useful arithmetic with important limits
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Protocol upgrades: distinguish proposal, release, activation, and migration
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Staking: separate validator rewards from the service wrapper
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MEV: understand how transaction ordering changes outcomes
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NFT metadata: separate token ownership from the file it references
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How to read a crypto whitepaper as a testable argument
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Bitcoin UTXOs: why a balance consists of individual outputs
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Bitcoin confirmations: reading settlement as a process
Further reading
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What a Bitcoin full node verifies for you
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Bitcoin custody: who can authorize a withdrawal?
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Bitcoin mining: from candidate block to accepted history
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Ethereum accounts: addresses, keys, contracts, and nonces
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Ethereum gas: distinguish work, price, and spending caps
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Ethereum finality: from a quick receipt to finalized settlement
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Smart contracts: inspect the rules and the people who can change them
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Token approvals: understand the permission before the swap
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Token supply: read minting, burning, vesting, and circulation separately
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Token decimals: translate raw balances without changing value
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Stablecoin mechanics: identify the route back to the target value
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Stablecoin reserves: read the assets, liabilities, and access terms