Confidence marks
An approval screen has to tell you what a transaction does. Some of that is arithmetic the wallet can do with certainty. Some of it is interpretation that depends on an indexer, a decoder, or data the wallet does not have.
Rather than presenting both with the same authority, every interpreted fact carries a mark.
| Mark | Meaning | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| EXACT | Computed from the transaction itself. | Trust the number. It is arithmetic. |
| ESTIMATED | Derived from data that could be stale or approximate. | Directionally right. Do not treat the last digits as precise. |
| UNKNOWN | The wallet could not determine this. | Treat as a reason to stop, not as zero. |
Why unknown is not zero
Section titled “Why unknown is not zero”The overall status of a request takes the worst mark present. A request cannot read as ready while any fact on it is unknown.
What to do with each
Section titled “What to do with each”Everything exact. The arithmetic is complete. Read the amounts and decide.
Something estimated. Usually fine. Common with protocol balances, where the amount depends on an indexer’s reading of the chain. Check that the direction and the rough size match what you expect.
Anything unknown. Stop and find out why before approving.
- If a protocol balance is unknown, an indexer probably could not be reached. Retry later rather than approving blind.
- If an output is unknown, the wallet could not tell whose it is or what it does. That is the shape of a request that is not what it appears to be.
- If the whole request is unknown, reject it. There is no cost to rejecting.
The related rule about mutation
Section titled “The related rule about mutation”Approval authority is computed once per request and re-checked at every signing entry point. A request that changed after you looked at it fails closed rather than being signed. You do not have to catch that yourself, and the marks are not the mechanism that catches it, but knowing it exists is worth something when you are deciding how much of the screen to trust.