Token Listing Glossary — Terms Used in Exchange Listing

Token identity

Contract address — The unique on-chain address of the smart contract that defines a token. It is the only reliable identifier a token has, because names and ticker symbols are not unique and anyone can deploy a contract using an existing project's name and symbol. The same project may deploy on several chains with different addresses.

Verified source code — Source code published on a block explorer and confirmed to correspond to the deployed bytecode. Without it, a reviewer is trusting a description of a contract rather than reading the contract.

Ticker / symbol — The short code identifying a token, such as BTC or MLRT. Stored as a string inside the contract and not unique across the industry.

Decimals — How many decimal places a token subdivides into. Read from the contract; a mismatch against documentation is a common cause of application delay.

Proxy contract — A contract that forwards calls to a separate implementation contract, allowing the implementation to be replaced. Introduces the question of who controls the upgrade.

Supply

Total supply — Every token that exists or will exist, including team allocations, treasury holdings, and tokens locked in vesting contracts.

Circulating supply — Tokens actually available to trade at a given moment. Always quoted with the date measured.

Market capitalisation — Current price multiplied by circulating supply. An arithmetic product of the last traded price and a supply figure, not money invested and not money withdrawable.

Fully diluted valuation (FDV) — Current price multiplied by total supply. A project with 10% of supply circulating has an FDV ten times its market cap. Comparing one project's market cap against another's FDV produces a meaningless comparison.

Vesting schedule — The dates and amounts at which locked tokens become transferable. A reviewer needs this as a table of dates and amounts; "vests over two years" is a description of a schedule rather than a schedule.

Cliff — A period during which no tokens unlock, followed by a first release. A cliff expiry is a concentrated unlock and warrants explicit disclosure.

Lock contract — A contract holding tokens until a specified time, enforcing a vesting schedule on-chain. A verifiable lock is worth considerably more than a stated intention.

Contract behaviour

Privileged function — A contract function that ordinary holders cannot call. Common examples are mint, pause, blacklist, and upgrade. Not disqualifying in itself; what matters is disclosure and who holds the keys.

Mint — Creation of new tokens after deployment, increasing supply.

Pause / freeze — The ability to halt transfers. Legitimate and occasionally protective — pause functions have saved projects during live exploits.

Blacklist — The ability to block specific addresses from transacting.

Fee-on-transfer — A token design where the amount received differs from the amount sent, because the contract takes a fee or redistributes on transfer. Breaks accounting assumptions most exchange integrations make, and must be disclosed before integration begins.

Rebase — A design where holder balances change without a transfer occurring, typically to target a price. Like fee-on-transfer, it requires specific integration handling.

Timelock — A delay enforced between calling a privileged function and its taking effect, giving holders time to react. A mint function behind a timelock and a multisig is a materially different risk from the same function behind one hot key.

Multisig — A wallet requiring several independent keys to authorise an action.

Renounced ownership — Permanently giving up the owner role. Note that renouncing Ownable does not necessarily remove other privileged roles, so "ownership renounced" is not by itself a complete statement about a contract's powers.

Market structure

Trading pair — Two assets quoted against each other, written base/quote. In BTC/USDT, BTC is the base and USDT the quote.

Base asset — The asset being bought or sold. Order quantities are denominated in it.

Quote asset — The asset a price is expressed in. Order prices and values are denominated in it.

Stablecoin — A cryptocurrency designed to hold a steady value against a reference asset, usually the US dollar. The peg is a design goal maintained by an issuer, not a guarantee.

Price precision — The number of decimal places a price can carry. Determines the smallest possible spread, so it constrains how tight a market can ever be.

Quantity precision — The smallest tradable amount of the base asset. Together with price, it sets the minimum meaningful order value.

Order book — The live list of unfilled buy and sell orders for a pair. Bids sorted highest first, asks lowest first.

Spread — The gap between the best bid and the best ask. The immediate cost of entering and exiting at market.

Depth — The total quantity resting near the top of the book. Determines how large an order can be before it moves the price.

Liquidity — How much of a token can be bought or sold without materially moving its price. Measured by depth and spread, not by trading volume.

Slippage — The difference between the price expected when submitting an order and the price at which it executes. A consequence of book depth, not a fee.

Market maker — A participant who quotes both sides of a book continuously, profiting from the spread while carrying inventory risk.

Liquidity provider — In an automated-market-maker system, a participant who deposits assets into a pool and earns a share of trading fees, with exposure to impermanent loss rather than inventory management. Distinct from a market maker.

Application process

Listing application — The submission through which a project asks an exchange to list its token. On CoinDock, a four-step form covering project identity, public references, supporting documents, and review.

Due diligence — The verification work an exchange performs: reconciling identity, examining the contract, checking documentary consistency, and assessing legal position.

Application status — On CoinDock: submitted, review, approved, or rejected. Every change is recorded, so an application has an auditable history.

Listing invoice — A billing record issued against an application. Visible in the applicant's authenticated account — never sent as an address in a message.

Audit report — An independent examination of contract code. Useful as evidence only when it names its auditor and covers the deployed version.

Related

• Coin Listing Requirements
• Token Listing Checklist
• USDT Pair Listings