What Is a Confirmation?
A confirmation is a block that includes your transaction, plus each block piled on top of it. "1 confirmation" means it made it into a block. "6 confirmations" means five more blocks have been built after that one. It is a waiting convention, not a sacred number, and it exists because the first inclusion is not the same thing as finality.
How It Actually Works
- Your wallet broadcasts. A miner or validator includes the transaction. Explorers flip from pending to success. That is confirmation one.
- A reorg can still pop that block off if a competing chain wins briefly. Each extra confirmation makes that rewrite more expensive. Bitcoin's six-block habit is convention from early papers and exchange caution, not a protocol constant.
- Exchanges pick their own depths per coin, which is why a deposit can show in the explorer and still sit on "pending" in the app. They are waiting out reorg risk, and sometimes their own AML queue, which is a different wait entirely (see the Travel Rule).
Risks and Common Mistakes
- Releasing goods or unlocking an account at zero or one confirmation on a chain that reorgs under load.
- Confusing a wallet's "confirmed" badge with economic finality on an L2. Read the finality entry before treating a fast chain as settled.
- Paying a "confirmation accelerator" site. Those are usually phishing.
When It Matters
Accepting payment, waiting on an exchange deposit, and deciding when a send is done enough to close the laptop. Check inclusion yourself with an explorer rather than trusting a spinner.
Related Terms
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