CoinRush

on-chain vs. onchain: which is right? fwiw no grammarian would say these are different words just like they wouldn't say "on-line" or "online" are different words, rather they're alt spellings, neither incorrect on-line was used in the 90s, then usage consensus moved to online because it's shorter and easier we're seeing a shift from "on-chain to "onchain" now for similar reasons yet the "onchain" shift has more debate, a schism stemming from the grammatical concepts of denotation and connotation denotation = a word's explicit technical meaning connotation = the extra shades of meaning that a word can evolve to imply in the beginning, there was only on-chain, and at first it only denoted "a project fully stored on a blockchain with no external dependencies" later - in parallel with the usage shift to the onchain spelling - the word has *also* evolved to connotate "a project that uses blockchain, even if it has external dependencies" originalists prefer the "on-chain" usage and its technical denotation, as they see "onchain" and its more expansive connotation as a bastardization and watering down of sorts all that said though, on-chain and onchain aren't technically different words, and neither are incorrect, it's ultimately just different spellings yet we do see varying *practical* usage: on-chain tends to just be used in a denotative sense, while onchain is often used interchangeably between its denotative and connatative senses whichever spelling you prefer is up to you, you won't be wrong either way, though i do expect the simpler onchain to win out like online did imo if you use either of these spellings connotatively, that's a step up over "c r y p t o" either is more aesthetic, more immediately inferrable, and with less connotative baggage, js you can also use on-chain/onchain as an adjective or adverb, and i think in adverbial uses onchain looks much cleaner (while they both look fine as adjectives), so i personally use onchain everywhere now