How long does an ETH transaction take?How long does an Ethereum transaction take?

An Ethereum transaction is usually included in the blockchain within one block. A new block is added roughly every 12 seconds, so that is also the time between "I click send" and "my transaction is confirmed". After that it has one confirmation.

Many wallets and exchanges do not consider one confirmation enough and wait for 12 to 30. That quickly takes one to five minutes. The reason: the more confirmations, the smaller the chance that the transaction can still be reversed.

Compare it with a SEPA transfer. On working days that is often in the other account within an hour; at the weekend you wait days. Seen in that light, an Ethereum transaction is actually very fast and it works 24/7.

A confirmation means that a block containing your transaction has been added to the blockchain. Every new block that follows is an extra confirmation.

How many confirmations are enough? That depends on the recipient:

• Between wallets, usually enough with 1 to 6 confirmations.
• At exchanges for crypto deposits, often 12 to 32. Exchanges are careful with large amounts.
• For finality (truly irreversible), Ethereum has had "epoch finality" since The Merge: after roughly 12 to 13 minutes (two epochs) a transaction is also formally final and technically speaking can no longer be reversed.

The more confirmations, the safer, but for most everyday transactions a handful is enough.

In three steps, explained without jargon:

1. You send the transaction. Your wallet puts your instruction ("send X ETH to address Y") in a digital letter and sends it into the Ethereum network. There it is seen by thousands of computers worldwide.
2. The transaction sits in the mempool. The mempool is a kind of waiting room for transactions that are still waiting for a block. The more gas fee (transaction costs) you include, the sooner a validator picks up your transaction for the next block.
3. A validator includes it in a block. An Ethereum validator (since The Merge no longer a miner, but a staker) bundles transactions from the mempool into a new block. That block is added to the blockchain every ~12 seconds. At that moment your transaction has one confirmation.

After that more and more blocks are added on top, and with them more and more confirmations.

All Ethereum transactions are publicly viewable via a block explorer. The best known one for Ethereum is etherscan.io.

There are two things you can search with:

• Transaction hash (TxHash), the unique code of your specific transaction. It always starts with 0x. You will find it in your wallet or in the confirmation email from the exchange. Paste it into the Etherscan search bar and you will see the exact status.
• Your receiving address, if you do not have a TxHash to hand, you can also look up your own ETH address. You then get an overview of all transactions to and from that address and the current balance.

In the Etherscan overview you see:

• Status, pending or confirmed
• Block, which block your transaction is in
• Confirmations, how many blocks sit on top
• Gas used / fee, what you actually paid
• Timestamp, exact time of confirmation