<p>Every fully verifying node checks locally whether the transactions and blocks adhere to the consensus rules of the network. It is important that nodes enforce the consensus rules themselves as they otherwise would need to trust their peers to give them correct information—which would be trivial to abuse. By running a full node, you guarantee that your view of the Bitcoin network's state is valid according to the consensus rules.</p>
<p>We call the inclusion of a transaction into a block by miners the <em>first confirmation</em> of a transaction. The reliability of a transaction due to being confirmed is only ever probabilistic, because a chaintip could get replaced by a competing chaintip with more work (to be clear, this <a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/4638/5406">rarely ever</a> happens in practice). However, each subsequent block adds more <em>proof of work</em> to the chaintip and makes it harder to replace the block that included your transaction. Thus, we count more blocks being found after the block that confirmed a transaction as additional confirmations for that transaction.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-02-27T15:23:34.440Z
2021-02-27T15:23:34.440Z
Murch
<p>Roughly every 10 minutes, a new &quot;block&quot; is created. If Joe sends Sue a satoshi, it will be at least 9 minutes and 59 seconds until they get 1 confirmation (as I understand it). Then, subsequent blocks will increase the number of confirmations in perpetuity, with 6 blocks equating to roughly one hour.</p>
<p>But up until today, I always thought that &quot;confirmations&quot; were simply fullnodes (such as the non-pruned Bitcoin Core I'm running) &quot;confirming&quot; that the transaction took place.</p>
<p>Is this entirely false? If so, what is the point of my fullnode? Does it have <em>any</em> say/power whatsoever? It seems like the miners are the only ones who matter.</p>

<bitcoin-core><full-node><confirmations>
Does Bitcoin "confirmations" have nothing to do with fullnodes -- only miners?
Q Zeedyk
# Does Bitcoin "confirmations" have nothing to do with fullnodes -- only miners?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-02-24)

Roughly every 10 minutes, a new "block" is created. If Joe sends Sue a satoshi, it will be at least 9 minutes and 59 seconds until they get 1 confirmation (as I understand it). Then, subsequent blocks will increase the number of confirmations in perpetuity, with 6 blocks equating to roughly one hour.

But up until today, I always thought that "confirmations" were simply fullnodes (such as the non-pruned Bitcoin Core I'm running) "confirming" that the transaction took place.

Is this entirely false? If so, what is the point of my fullnode? Does it have *any* say/power whatsoever? It seems like the miners are the only ones who matter.

**Tags:** bitcoin-core, full-node, confirmations


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2021-02-27. Score: 1

Every fully verifying node checks locally whether the transactions and blocks adhere to the consensus rules of the network. It is important that nodes enforce the consensus rules themselves as they otherwise would need to trust their peers to give them correct information—which would be trivial to abuse. By running a full node, you guarantee that your view of the Bitcoin network's state is valid according to the consensus rules.

We call the inclusion of a transaction into a block by miners the *first confirmation* of a transaction. The reliability of a transaction due to being confirmed is only ever probabilistic, because a chaintip could get replaced by a competing chaintip with more work (to be clear, this [rarely ever](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/4638/5406) happens in practice). However, each subsequent block adds more *proof of work* to the chaintip and makes it harder to replace the block that included your transaction. Thus, we count more blocks being found after the block that confirmed a transaction as additional confirmations for that transaction.


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