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<p>Bitcoin users usually wait about an hour before treating a payment as settled. <a href="https://www.algorand.com/technology/pure-proof-of-stake" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Algorand</a> (<a href="https://x.com/search?q=%24ALGO&amp;src=cashtag_click" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">$ALGO</a>) takes a different approach: payments are final as soon as they land in a block, which arrive roughly every 2.8 seconds.</p>
<h2 id="why-bitcoin-payments-wait-for-confirmations">Why Bitcoin payments wait for confirmations</h2>
<p>On Bitcoin (<a href="https://x.com/search?q=%24BTC&amp;src=cashtag_click" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">$BTC</a>), miners work at the same time, so conflicting versions of the chain can briefly form. According to a <a href="https://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/reupapers/katzbitcoin16.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">University of Maryland paper</a>, the shorter branch is orphaned and any conflicting transactions are invalidated. This is the fork problem, and it means a payment on the losing side can be undone.</p>
<p>The risk of a reversal falls as more blocks are added on top. The same paper notes that a transaction with six confirmations is widely accepted as secure against double-spending. At about 10 minutes per block, <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.01383" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">researchers note</a> that six confirmations take roughly an hour, which makes payments slow.</p>
<h2 id="how-algorand-avoids-forks">How Algorand avoids forks</h2>
<p>Algorand is built to stop those splits from happening. It uses Pure Proof-of-Stake, in which, per <a href="https://www.spark.money/tools/bitcoin-vs-algorand" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Spark's Bitcoin vs Algorand comparison</a>, a verifiable random function selects block proposers and committee members. Selection odds are proportional to the amount of ALGO held. Each new block goes to a vote by randomly chosen voters, and it needs more than two-thirds of the votes to pass.</p>
<p>Because the chain does not split, there is nothing to roll back. <a href="https://finst.com/en/learn/articles/what-is-algorand" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Finst's Algorand explainer</a> says there is no need for several more blocks to be built on top of a block before it gets extra confirmation. Spark lists Algorand's finality as deterministic, in a single block, against Bitcoin's probabilistic finality of about 60 minutes for six confirmations.</p>
<h2 id="the-trade-off-in-a-crisis">The trade-off in a crisis</h2>
<p>The design has a cost when things go wrong. If the network splits, or too many voters act dishonestly, Algorand stops producing blocks. Payments then wait until enough honest voters can reach each other again to restart. The protocol tolerates bad actors only while more than two-thirds of the stake is honest, according to Spark.</p>
<p>In short, Algorand trades continuous availability under extreme stress for speed and certainty in normal operation. Bitcoin makes the opposite trade: the chain keeps moving, but users wait for added confirmations before they can rely on a payment.</p>
<p><strong>Sources:</strong></p>
<ul>
 <li><a href="https://www.algorand.com/technology/pure-proof-of-stake" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Algorand: Pure Proof-of-Stake technology</a></li>
 <li><a href="https://www.spark.money/tools/bitcoin-vs-algorand" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Spark: Bitcoin vs Algorand</a></li>
 <li><a href="https://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/reupapers/katzbitcoin16.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Liao and Katz: Incentivizing Double-Spend Collusion in Bitcoin</a></li>
</ul>

Why Algorand payments don’t wait for extra blocks

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