What Is the Role of Block Confirmation Times in Mitigating Double-Spend Risks?

Block confirmation time plays a crucial role in security. Each new block added to a blockchain after a transaction is a 'confirmation,' making the transaction progressively harder to reverse.

An attacker wanting to double-spend must recreate not only the block with the original transaction but all subsequent blocks as well. The longer the confirmation time a recipient waits, the more blocks are added, and the more computationally expensive it becomes for an attacker to build a longer chain to replace it.

Therefore, longer confirmation times act as a practical defense, increasing the cost and difficulty of a successful double-spend attack.