Solana - Indexing and Confirmation

For preflight checks and transaction processing, Solana nodes choose which bank state to query based on a commitment requirement set by the client. The commitment describes how finalized a block is at that point in time.

Solana blocks - state in descending order of commitment

Finalized

The node will query the most recent block confirmed by supermajority of the cluster as having reached maximum lockout, meaning the cluster has recognized this block as finalized.

Confirmed

The node will query the most recent block that has been voted on by supermajority of the cluster.

• It incorporates votes from gossip and replay.
• It does not count votes on descendants of a block, only direct votes on that block.
• This confirmation level also upholds "optimistic confirmation" guarantees in release 1.3 and onwards.

Processed

The node will query its most recent block. Note that the block may still be skipped by the cluster.

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It's recommended to query blocks with a "finalized" state. These should take about 2-3 minutes. More information is avaialble at the following link.