Confirmation
A confirmation is a block that landed on top of your transaction. The more confirmations there are, the more expensive it gets to rewrite that record.
What a confirmation is
Once a transaction gets into a block it has one confirmation. The next block adds a second, and so on. Every new block makes rolling the old record back more expensive, because the whole chain after it would have to be rewritten.
That is where payment practice comes from. Small sums often clear on one or two confirmations, while large ones wait longer. Exchanges and services set their own rules, and the figure of six confirmations is a custom rather than a rule of the protocol.
For a miner, confirmations concern the reward. Coins for a block found on Bitcoin become available after 100 confirmations, which is roughly seventeen hours. In a pool you never see this: the pool pays out of its own funds and waits for maturity itself.
The pace of confirmations is set by the network, not by you. Bitcoin turns out a block every ten minutes, Litecoin every two and a half, Kaspa about once a second. So one confirmation means a completely different degree of safety from one network to the next.
Quick reference table
| What it is | a block on top of your transaction |
| The first confirmation | getting into a block |
| Reward maturity on Bitcoin | 100 confirmations, about 17 hours |
| Bitcoin pace | about 10 minutes per confirmation |
| Kaspa pace | about one second |
How long the wait runs in practice
Treat a pool payout as arrived once it has its first confirmation, and after that it is a matter of nerves. If the sum is substantial, wait a few blocks before calling it final.
When a transaction hangs a long time with no confirmations, the fee is the reason: it came out below the competition in the queue. Pools run into this on days when the network suddenly clogs up.
Do not mix confirmations up with maturity. Maturity concerns the block reward only, and it exists so the network can discard a block that turned out to be surplus during a short split of the chain.
An example in numbers
A Bitcoin block reward matures after 100 confirmations, which is roughly seventeen hours at a ten minute interval. On Litecoin the same 100 blocks pass in a little over four hours. The difference shows up right away: one and the same count of confirmations means different amounts of time on different networks.
Related terms
Where to go next on the site
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- ASIC Miner knowledge base
Questions and answers
How many confirmations do you need
It depends on the sum and on whoever accepts the payment. Everyday amounts clear on one or two, while large ones wait longer. Six confirmations is a custom rather than a demand of the protocol.
Why is the block reward not available right away
On Bitcoin it matures after 100 confirmations. That is how the network insures itself against short splits of the chain, where a block can end up discarded.
Can a confirmation be sped up
Only with a fee, and the sender decides that. A recipient can speed up nothing.
How the terms connect
Every link in the chain is clickable. Orange marks where you are now.
Looking for an ASIC miner
The catalog holds 212 models. You can compare them by hashrate and by joules per terahash, then plug your own rate into the calculator and see what stays in your pocket.
Page written and checked by Denys Klimchuk. Updated .