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Why ask about finality after seeing a transaction?

Receipt, inclusion and finalization are different states.

Receipt, inclusion in a block and finalization are different stages. An included transaction can leave the accepted history if the network switches to another branch. Finality asks which protocol conditions let an application treat that history as settled.

Ethereum’s Gasper both chooses a branch to extend and finalizes history through validator votes on particular blocks, called checkpoints. Ordinary branch selection should not reverse finalized history; doing so requires a serious consensus failure. A success message alone does not establish that these conditions hold.

For a teaching access-control app, specify its confirmation policy and behavior when confirmation is unavailable. The policy depends on the application and protocol, not one waiting number for every chain.

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