Jun 26, 2026

Order Books, AI Plumbing, Onchain Data, and Macro Curves

A daily crypto, finance, and AI vocabulary grouping puzzle for beginners.

Order Book Mechanics

These words describe how bids, asks, and resting liquidity shape execution.

Order BookBid-Ask SpreadMarket DepthLimit Order
  • Order Book: An order book is the live list of buy and sell orders waiting to trade on an exchange.
  • Bid-Ask Spread: The bid-ask spread is the difference between the highest bid and lowest ask in a market.
  • Market Depth: Market depth describes how much buy or sell interest sits near the current price.
  • Limit Order: A limit order tells an exchange to buy or sell only at a specified price or better.

AI Model Plumbing

These terms cover the basic pipeline from tokenizing text to shaping model behavior.

TokenizerEmbeddingAttentionFine-tuning
  • Tokenizer: A tokenizer splits text into units that an AI model can process.
  • Embedding: An embedding is a numeric vector that captures meaning or similarity for text, images, or other data.
  • Attention: Attention is a model mechanism that weighs which input parts matter most for each output step.
  • Fine-tuning: Fine-tuning updates a pretrained model on a narrower dataset to better fit a specific task.

Onchain Data Reading

These breadcrumbs help analysts trace transfers, logs, and contract interactions.

Block ExplorerEvent LogContract AddressToken Transfer
  • Block Explorer: A block explorer is a website or tool for inspecting blocks, transactions, addresses, and smart contracts.
  • Event Log: An event log is structured data emitted by a smart contract when something important happens on-chain.
  • Contract Address: A contract address identifies the deployed account that stores and runs smart contract code.
  • Token Transfer: A token transfer is a blockchain transaction that moves tokens from one address to another.

Macro Rate Curves

These terms describe the shape of yields and how bond prices respond to rate changes.

Term StructureYield SpreadConvexityBreakeven Inflation
  • Term Structure: The term structure shows how interest rates or yields differ across short and long maturities.
  • Yield Spread: A yield spread is the gap between two bond yields, often used to compare risk or maturity profiles.
  • Convexity: Convexity describes how a bond's price changes as interest rates move, beyond the simple duration effect.
  • Breakeven Inflation: Breakeven inflation is the inflation rate implied by the gap between nominal and inflation-linked bond yields.