What can you safely do while waiting for a swap to finalize

07 September 2026

You can safely walk away from your computer and do anything else that does not require you to access the coins you sent or the coins you expect to receive. The swap will either complete or fail on its own, and neither outcome requires your real-time attention.

The reason is simple: once you have sent the deposit transaction to the network, control of the swap passes entirely to the exchanger's automated system and the blockchain. Your wallet is no longer involved in the process. The exchanger monitors the deposit address for confirmations, executes the conversion, and sends the output to the destination address you provided. None of these steps can be sped up, slowed down, or influenced by refreshing a browser tab or watching a progress bar.

What you can do safely:

• Sleep. A swap that runs overnight will either finish or fail by morning. The exchanger does not abandon pending swaps at midnight. It processes them in order, regardless of the hour.
• Work. Your computer does not need to stay on. The swap is tracked on the blockchain, not on your local machine.
• Travel. The destination address is fixed when you initiate the swap. The output will arrive there whether you are at home or on a plane.
• Use the internet for other purposes. Watching a video or browsing other sites does not interfere with the swap. The exchange status page is not a control panel; it is a read-only view.
• Start another swap, provided you have separate funds. Each swap is independent. You can queue multiple swaps, but the exchanger will process them one at a time per deposit address. Spreading funds across multiple swaps does not make any single one faster.

What you cannot safely do:

• Spend the coins you sent. They are already committed to the swap. If you try to spend them from a different wallet or a different address, the transaction will fail or create a conflict.
• Spend the coins you expect to receive. They are not in your wallet yet. The best you can do is watch the destination address on a block explorer. The coins will appear when the exchanger sends them, not before.
• Cancel the swap by closing your browser or turning off your phone. The swap is not tied to your session. It will continue until the blockchain settles it.
• Change the destination address. Once the swap is in progress, the output address is locked. The exchanger will not redirect funds to a new address under any circumstance.

What to do if the swap seems stuck:

First, check the block explorer for the source chain. Look at the transaction you sent. How many confirmations does it have? If the network is congested, the transaction may still be pending. The exchanger cannot start the swap until the deposit has enough confirmations. The exact number depends on the chain and is covered in a separate page titled "How many block confirmations do different chains require before a swap completes."

If the deposit has the required confirmations but the swap has not progressed for a long time, the issue may be on the destination chain. Some chains settle faster than others. The exchanger may be waiting for a certain number of confirmations on the output side before marking the swap complete.

If the estimated time window has passed and nothing has moved, contact support. Provide the swap ID and the transaction hash. Support can check whether the swap is queued, waiting for a network response, or stuck due to a technical problem.

The key point:

A swap in progress is a machine. It does not need your attention. You can safely do anything that does not involve touching the funds involved. The hub page "Why swap times vary and what to do during the wait" explains the factors that determine how long that machine takes to run. If you want to understand why a swap that took seconds yesterday is taking an hour today, that page is the next place to read.

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