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Onchain Economics
Infrastructure

Finality

The guarantee that a transaction cannot be reversed or altered once confirmed.

In-Depth Explanation

Different chains have different finality models. Bitcoin has probabilistic finality—the more confirmations, the harder to reverse, but never truly impossible. Ethereum PoS has economic finality after ~15 minutes—reverting would require slashing >1/3 of staked ETH. Faster finality is a competitive feature for L1s and L2s.

Related Terms

Consensus Mechanism

The method by which a blockchain network agrees on the current state of the ledger and validates new transactions.

Blockchain

A distributed, immutable ledger that records transactions across a network of computers using cryptographic linking.

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Gas Fees

Transaction fees paid to validators/miners for executing operations on a blockchain.

Gwei

A denomination of Ether equal to one billionth of an ETH, commonly used to express gas prices.

Layer 2

L2

Scaling solutions built on top of a base blockchain (L1) that process transactions off-chain while inheriting L1 security.

Layer 1

L1

The base blockchain that provides security and consensus, such as Ethereum, Bitcoin, or Solana.

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