When you make an on-chain deposit, your transaction is broadcast to the bitcoin network but does not become part of the blockchain immediately. Initially, the transaction sits in the mempool (a list of pending transactions kept on every node in the bitcoin network). Each transaction must then be verified and included in a valid block through a process called bitcoin mining. This is how your transaction is added to the blockchain.
On average, each block takes approximately 10 minutes to be mined. With each subsequent block mined, the number of confirmations for transactions in previous blocks increases. The higher the number of confirmations, the more final a transaction is deemed to be.
Tick tock, next block. 🕒
For security, incoming transactions will say 'pending' until they have 3 confirmations. At this point, your deposit will be credited and available in your Bottlepay account.
You can tap the following link to find out more about On-chain deposits vs Off-chain (lightning) deposits.
Or, if you want to see the process first-hand, then consider using a block explorer like mempool.space to follow a transaction as it moves into the mempool and then onto the blockchain, gathering more confirmations every 10 minutes or so. Simply paste a bitcoin transaction ID into the search bar in the top right, sit back and prepare to have your mind blown. 🤯