Windows users might call a daemon a "service".

I mean the "service" you run that makes the coin go.

Maybe you might have a GUI program you run that has an ability to "do" the coin?

The daemon or service is the running code on your machine that you talk to via your command line or GUI telling it you want to do this that or the other thing about the coin.

Importantly it is also the program that talks to other machines to enable the peer to peer networking to get the blockchain get and send transactions and so on.

Call it "program" instead of "daemon" or "service" if you prefer.

Or call it the coin as in run the coin aka run the daemon that enables the coin aka run the service that makes the coin be up and running on your machine aka start the coin's networking so it communicates with other machines on the network to get and keep up with the blockchain.

-MarkM-