When you send crypto, the transaction is not final the moment you press “confirm” in your wallet; it must first be accepted by the network and written into the blockchain. 

Each time a new block is added after the one containing your transaction, you gain another “confirmation,” and the transfer becomes harder to reverse.

A confirmation is simply proof that miners or validators have included your transaction in a block and other nodes agree that it is valid. 

Multiple confirmations act like multiple security checks, protecting against problems such as double‑spending, temporary chain splits, or malicious re‑orgs.

Different networks and platforms require different numbers of confirmations before they treat a transaction as safe to use. 

For example, low‑value Bitcoin transfers might be accepted after one confirmation, while exchanges often wait for three to six to reach a practical level of finality.

Finality is the point where a transaction is considered effectively irreversible, meaning the cost or difficulty of rewriting the chain becomes extremely high. 

Proof‑of‑work chains achieve this probabilistically as more blocks pile on top, while many modern proof‑of‑stake systems aim for faster or even “immediate” finality through their consensus design.

For everyday users, understanding confirmations explains why deposits sometimes take minutes and why apps show “unconfirmed,” “pending,” or “X of Y confirmations” before crediting funds. 

Waiting for enough confirmations is what gives merchants, exchanges, and DeFi protocols the confidence that your transaction is real, secure, and no longer at risk of being reversed.