Inclusion, confirmation depth and finality are different claims. Compare Profiles record finality with these values. Checkpointed: a fork-choice rule picks blocks, and a later mechanism, such as a signature from a validator quorum, locks them so that nodes reject competing branches. Economic finality: a supermajority of bonded validators finalizes blocks, and reverting a finalized block would need conflicting votes from validators whose bond the protocol can then penalize. Probabilistic: confidence grows as later blocks bury a transaction; reversal becomes less likely but is never excluded by a protocol rule. Designs that reach finality another way are recorded as other, with the chain's own term in its profile.
Key idea. A receipt saying 'included' describes an observation. A settlement policy adds an explicit rule for how much reversal risk the application accepts.
Example
An indexer can report an inclusion height while still being behind the network. A fresh response timestamp alone does not establish settlement.
Keep in mind
- There is no universal number of confirmations suitable for every chain and application.
- Do not equate a block interval, transaction-block interval, and time to economic settlement.
- Finality has protocol assumptions; a provider report is not independent consensus verification.
Sources
- Bitcoin whitepaper, sections 5 and 11 (external site)
- Ethereum finality (external site)
- Dash Improvement Proposals: DIP-0008 ChainLocks (external site)