Reading an explorer

An explorer is a website that reads the public ledger and shows accounts, transactions, and ledgers. A payment is final only when it is in a validated ledger, not when a screen first flashes “sent.”

Support chats and pop-ups lie. The public record is the place you confirm a destination, a memo or destination tag, a fee, and whether the transaction actually landed.

Start with the transaction hash, the long id of that one transaction. The explorer should show the source, the destination, the amount, the fee, and the ledger index it closed in. If the result is not validated, it can still fail or change. Validated means the network agreed on that ledger.

A destination tag is a number some exchanges ask you to attach so they know which customer to credit. The tag is not a secret. Forgetting it can land the funds in the exchange’s account with no label. A source tag is the same idea in the other direction.

Real example: on the XRP Ledger, a successful payment in a validated ledger is final within seconds. An explorer such as the one the ledger publishes will show that close. “Pending” in a wallet is not the same screen. Sources: Finality of Results, Source and Destination Tags.