Crypto Academy: learn how digital assets work

Learn crypto with practical Crypto Loop Academy guides, clear explanations and source-linked references.

• Accounts, signatures and transaction boundaries

  Understanding how accounts, signatures and transaction boundaries work is central to building safer blockchain applications. This article explains public and private keys, EIP-712 typed-data domains, chain separation, nonces, replay protection, recovery patterns and the practical limits developer…

• The EVM: state, gas and execution

  The EVM looks simple from the outside: a transaction enters, code runs, and state changes if execution succeeds. Underneath, however, the machine is tightly constrained by state models, memory layouts, calldata encoding, gas accounting, and rollback rules. This article explains how those pieces f…

• Smart-contract design around invariants

  Smart-contract design around invariants

• Testing contracts beyond the happy path

  A practical guide to testing smart contracts outside the happy path, with emphasis on where each test type helps, where it can mislead, and how to combine tests for stronger coverage.

• Oracles: external facts inside consensus

  Oracles: external facts inside consensus

• Building a wallet connection that respects users

  A respectful wallet connection is not just a technical handshake. It is a set of choices that preserve user control, make permissions explicit, and limit what an application can do by default. This article explains how to design around EIP-1193, handle account and chain changes carefully, preview…

• Token approvals and permission design

  Token approvals and permission design

• Indexers, RPC providers and missing events

  How indexers and RPC providers can miss events, and how to design for reorgs, pagination, log deduplication, block checkpoints, at-least-once processing, finality, and RPC quorum.

• Upgrades, governance and hidden trust

  Upgrades, governance and hidden trust

• From testnet prototype to production decision

  Moving a blockchain application from testnet to mainnet is not a simple switch. The decision should rest on a threat model, repeatable deployment steps, observable operations, dependency control, incident playbooks, and a formal go/no-go gate that can be defended after the fact.

• Bitcoin: scarcity, settlement and trade-offs

  Bitcoin is often introduced as “digital gold,” but that phrase hides important mechanics. This article explains how Bitcoin’s issuance schedule works, what proof of work does and does not guarantee, why confirmations matter, how chain reorganisations can happen, how fees fit into settlement, and…

• Ethereum and the programmable ledger

  Ethereum and the programmable ledger

• What you actually own when you own crypto

  What you actually own when you own crypto

• Wallets, recovery phrases and operational safety

  Wallets, recovery phrases and operational safety

• How a blockchain transaction becomes final

  A blockchain transaction does not become final in one step. It moves through a chain of checks: it is signed, broadcast, placed in the network’s waiting area, selected into a block, and then protected by additional confirmations or protocol rules that make reversal increasingly difficult. This ar…

• Stablecoins are liabilities, not cash

  Stablecoins are often marketed as cash-like, but economically and legally they are usually liabilities: promises to pay, redeem, or maintain a value target under stated conditions. Understanding that distinction matters because different stablecoin designs shift risk between the issuer, the reser…

• Custody: choosing which risks to accept

  Custody is not one choice between safety and convenience; it is a set of risks to allocate deliberately. This article explains exchange custody, self-custody, multisig, segregation, bankruptcy claims, withdrawal tests, and the ways counterparty dependence shows up in practice.

• DeFi lending without the yield mythology

  DeFi lending is often described through yields, but the mechanics matter more than the headline rate. This primer explains how overcollateralised lending usually works, why utilisation pushes variable rates up and down, how oracle-based liquidations are triggered, where bad debt can come from, an…

• Bridges and the cost of crossing chains

  Bridges and the cost of crossing chains

• Reading a token's supply and incentives

  Reading a token's supply and incentives

• Position sizing starts with the loss

  Position sizing starts with the loss

• Market structure before market opinions

  Market structure before market opinions: read the book, the spread, and the venue before you form a view

• A trading journal that can falsify a thesis

  A trading journal that can falsify a thesis

• Limit orders, market orders and execution

  Limit orders, market orders and execution

• Perpetual futures: funding and liquidation

  Perpetual futures can look simple on a screen, but the economics behind funding, margin, and liquidation are more exacting than the interface suggests. This article explains how the index, mark, and trade prices differ, why funding exists, how maintenance margin and liquidation thresholds interac…

• Volatility is not the whole of risk

  Volatility is a useful summary statistic, but it does not capture the full shape of risk. For pillar trading, the more important question is how losses emerge: through fat-tailed moves, abrupt jumps, persistent drawdowns, gaps between realised and implied conditions, and the practical frictions o…

• Slippage, fees and the real execution cost

  Slippage, fees and the real execution cost

• Backtests: where good-looking results fail

  Backtests can make a trading rule look robust when it is only fitted to history. This article explains the main ways results fail, how to check for them, and why walk-forward evaluation is useful but limited.

• Using a testnet without mistaking it for a market

  A testnet can be a useful rehearsal space for trading workflows, but only if you treat it as an engineered environment rather than a live market. This article explains how to separate testnet mechanics from production assumptions: what wallet signatures really prove, how faucets and test balances…

• News is not automatically a trading signal

  News can change a market’s story, but it does not automatically change a position’s edge. This pillar article explains why timing, expectations, liquidity, source hierarchy, causation, crowded narratives, and risk horizon matter before treating headlines as tradeable signals.