Binance Smart Chain, also known lovingly as Binance Scam Chain. A "decentralised" chain created by the family run Binance exchange. Jokes aside, this was actually called Ce-De-Fi by CZ... which meant centralized decentralized finance! At the time the chain had around 6 validators who were all thought to be the same person. No doubt it is more decentralized now and it is certainly wildly popular. One of the first successful smart contract chains to provide an alternative to Ethereum and its insanely high gas fees. Update: It has recently been rebranded to BNB chain.

A dApp is a software application that is built on a decentralised network (e.g. a blockchain) and is a combination of a front end user interface and a smart contract.

The recreation of traditional financial services like borrowing and lending in a permissionless manner on decentralised blockchains. Only code and logic decide what happens e.g. how much you can borrow based on your collateral or when a loan is liquidated. Aave and Maker DAO are the two of the earliest and most successful DeFi protocols.

Ethereum isn't a cryptocurrency. It also isn't just a passion project of one introverted boy who had always been good at math. Ethereum is the blockchain behind the cryptocurrency Ether (ETH) and thousands of decentralised applications (dApps) we use today. Ethereum is also known as the world's first programmable blockchain i.e. Anyone can build on it. The blockchain was launched by Vitalik Buterin in 2014 and is quite different from Bitcoin. Both blockchains allow users to enjoy benefits of digital money without need for banks. But Ethereum is for more than just payments. The blockchain is very popular for facilitating Web3 buzzwords like: NFTs, DeFi, smart contracts and DAOs.

When digital data is stored off a blockchain, for example on a central server, it is considered off-chain. Some NFT projects store the data of their projects this way on decentralised servers like IFPS (Interplanetary File System), but it can incur large long-term costs and be at risk if the server goes down.