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Intended reader: anyone waiting on a transaction, or checking what happened. Goal: correctly reading the state of your own money. Prerequisites: an unlocked wallet.

StateMeaning
PendingBroadcast, sitting in the mempool, not in a block. It can still be dropped.
ConfirmedIncluded in a block. Each new block adds a confirmation.
FailedThe network rejected it. Nothing moved and no fee was paid.

There is no universal answer, only a risk judgement.

  • One confirmation is enough for a small payment between people who trust each other.
  • Three confirmations is a common threshold for ordinary amounts.
  • Six confirmations is the traditional benchmark for something you would mind losing.

An unconfirmed transaction is not a payment. If someone tells you they have sent funds and your wallet shows pending, you have a promise, not money.

The fee rate was below what blocks are currently clearing.

Marking a transaction replaceable at creation does not give you a control in this wallet for replacing it later. That is why choosing the fee carefully the first time matters more here than in wallets that offer a bump.

Each entry shows the amount, the direction, the fee, the counterparty address, and the transaction id. The transaction id is the thing you can hand to anyone: it is public, it is verifiable independently, and it does not reveal anything about your wallet beyond what the chain already shows.

Asset transfers appear alongside payments, subject to the wallet being able to read them. Asset data comes from indexers, which read the chain and decide what a transaction meant. Indexers can lag behind confirmations, so a confirmed transaction can briefly show a payment without its asset effect.

If the wallet cannot read a protocol at all, the payment still appears and the asset effect does not. See What this release authorizes.

What you seeWhat it meansWhat to do
Pending for hoursFee below current clearing rateWait. See the warning above.
A transaction you do not recogniseEither a change output you misread, or a real problemCheck whether the destination is your own address. If not, go to If your wallet is compromised
Confirmed but the asset has not movedIndexer lag, or an unsupported protocolWait, then check Troubleshooting
Activity is empty after a restoreWrong address type or derivation pathSee Address types