Nonce

A nonce is a “number used once” that appears in two crypto contexts. In proof-of-work mining, it is a value miners repeatedly change while hashing a block until the output meets the difficulty target. In many account-based networks, a nonce is a per-account counter that orders a senders transactions and stops the same one from being replayed.

A common misconception is that these are the same thing; they share a name but serve different purposes. In both cases the nonce helps ensure uniqueness and correct ordering rather than storing any balance.