Lead · Consensus Mechanisms
A block explorer showing "confirmed" tells you what most people currently agree on. Finality tells you this will never change again. The gap between those two is exactly why the exchange makes you wait.
Hiroshi Endo
·
September 03, 2026
In May 2018, the Bitcoin Gold network suffered a 51% Attack in which the attacker, having gained control of the majority of hashing power, stole roughly $18 million from exchanges. The core of the trick: the attacker privately built a competing chain, and only released this longer, pre-prepared chain once exchanges had already credited the deposits and users had already withdrawn their assets...