What Is a ‘Nonce’ in the Context of a Cryptocurrency Transaction?

A nonce is a unique, sequential number assigned to each transaction sent from a specific wallet address. It serves two main purposes: to prevent replay attacks and to ensure transactions are processed in the correct order.

The network will only confirm a transaction if its nonce is the next expected number for that address. If a transaction with a lower nonce is pending, all subsequent transactions from that address will be stalled.