Lesson 6 of 6 · 8 min

How to Read What Happened on the Network

Lesson goalAfter this lesson you can find a transaction in a block explorer, read its status, fee and number of confirmations, and work out for yourself where the money got stuck.

When money in your bank account is delayed, you call the bank. With crypto-assets you can first look for yourself at what happened, because the record is public. This skill is worth acquiring right away: it protects you from panic and from fake “customer support”.

The journey of a transaction

Signature: the wallet or exchange signs the transaction with the private key.
Waiting room (mempool): the transaction waits for someone to include it in a block. A higher fee usually means faster inclusion.
First confirmation: the transaction has entered a block.
Further confirmations: each new block after that adds one confirmation, and changing history becomes ever harder.

On Bitcoin a block is created about every ten minutes on average, so six confirmations often take around an hour, sometimes longer or shorter. On Ethereum blocks come much more often, every 12 seconds. Each exchange decides for itself how many confirmations it requires before crediting your deposit, so a deposit can be visible on the network and still unavailable in your account.

What a fee costs

The fee doesn’t depend on the amount but on how much block space or computation the transaction uses, and on how busy the network is. Sending €10 and sending €10,000 can cost the same.

Reading a block explorer

A block explorer is a website that displays the network’s records. You will often see, for example, mempool.space for Bitcoin and Etherscan for Ethereum. Each network has its own explorer. In the search box enter the transaction identifier (Tx hash or Tx ID) that you see in your wallet or exchange history. Pay attention to these fields:

Status: pending, success or failed.
Sender and recipient (from, to): compare the recipient’s address character by character.
Value: for tokens, the ETH field may show 0, and the actual amount is in the token transfers line. That is not an error.
Fee and confirmations: how much was paid and how many blocks have passed since inclusion.

Remember

A transaction goes from signature through the waiting room to inclusion in a block, and each new block adds a confirmation.
The fee depends on the space or computation used and on congestion, not on the amount sent.
The Tx ID and a block explorer show the status, recipient, fee and number of confirmations.
A failed transaction can still charge a fee.
Before contacting support, check for yourself where the transaction got stuck.