Understand Crypto

Follow one payment from a wallet to a block.

Follow the receipt

Alice submits a signed instruction to send ETH. Her wallet can show the instruction immediately. Inclusion comes later, when a validator includes it in a block. A pending transaction hash alone therefore tells Bob too little to mark an invoice paid.

Open a recent transaction in the Sepolia test explorer. Record the network, status, sender, recipient, value, fee and block number. Compare the value received with the sender’s total cost. A failed execution may still consume gas.

Coin or token?

ETH is the native asset used to pay Ethereum transaction fees. An ERC-20 token follows the rules of its own contract. For a token transfer, inspect the token contract and its transfer event. The transaction’s destination can be the contract while the event identifies the token recipient.

Next: rehearse a payment in Wallet Lab. Reference: Ethereum transactions.