The fee, the network and the confirmation

The fee does not look at the value

Anyone coming from a bank arrives with a reasonable, wrong expectation: that sending more costs more. On an open network it does not work that way. The fee pays for space in the next block, and space is measured in size, not in value.

A transaction for ten and one for ten million take up practically the same lines: where it came from, where it goes, and the signature. So they cost practically the same. Whoever pays more is whoever has a bigger transaction — not whoever moves more money.

What does move the fee is the other side: how many people want that same space right now. Nobody sets that price. It comes out of the auction from lesson 02, which is why it rises and falls on its own. Move both controls and see which one moves the bar.

Waiting is free

Between you pressing “send” and the transaction entering a block there is a place: the waiting area every machine on the network keeps. The transaction sits there, visible, not yet counting.

Sitting there costs nothing. If you paid little and the network is busy, your transaction simply waits for it to clear — that can take hours, and sometimes it drops out on its own and the money never left. Paying little is not losing: it is waiting.

That is why almost every wallet offers “fast, normal, economy”. Those are not three services: they are three guesses at what you need to pay to get into the next block, in the auction happening now.

Not a stamp, a height

When your transaction enters a block it has one confirmation. When another block closes on top of that one, it has two. That is all it is: the count of how many blocks came after.

Why would anyone wait for more than one? Because undoing a block requires redoing all of its work and that of every block after it — that was lesson 02. Every new block multiplies that cost. At some point undoing costs more than anything you would gain by undoing.

Notice what this is not: there is no moment at which the transaction becomes final. There is a moment at which it becomes too expensive to be worth attacking. Tap to stack blocks.

Right address, wrong network

This is the part that pays for the lesson, and there is nothing technical about it. Different networks use similar address formats — sometimes identical ones. The same address can exist on two networks at once.

So this happens: you copy the right address, paste it right, and pick the wrong network when withdrawing. The transaction goes out, is valid, and arrives — on the other network. From the system's point of view nothing went wrong. There is no reversing. Recovery, where it is possible at all, depends on whoever controls that address's key being willing and able to help.

This costs, every single day, far more money than any network fee ever cost anybody.

Now read the sentence

It's the same one from the top, unblurred. Tap each highlighted part.