# Transactions & Fees

A **transaction** is a signed instruction that says "move this amount from my address to that address." Here's the lifecycle, start to finish.

## How a transaction moves

1. **You create it** — pick a recipient address and an amount in your wallet app.
2. **You sign it** — your wallet uses your [private key](/docs/learn/keys-and-addresses) to produce a cryptographic signature proving the request is really yours. The key itself is never exposed; only the signature is.
3. **It's broadcast** — the signed transaction goes out to the network's computers (nodes).
4. **It's confirmed** — miners (Bitcoin) or validators (Ethereum and most others) include it in a new block. Each additional block on top is another **confirmation**, making it harder to ever reverse.

## Two things beginners must internalize

- **It's irreversible.** Once confirmed, there's no chargeback and no undo. Send to the wrong address and the funds are simply gone. This is why you verify the recipient *before* signing.
- **You sign, then it's final.** Signing is the moment of commitment. Everything before it is editable; nothing after it is.

## What fees pay for

Every transaction pays a **network fee** to the people running the network — not to KeepKey, and not to any wallet maker. The fee is the incentive for miners/validators to include your transaction.

- On **Bitcoin**, it's called the *miner fee* and scales with the transaction's size in bytes.
- On **Ethereum** (and EVM chains), it's called **gas** — you pay for the computation your transaction uses, priced in the network's native coin.
- Fees **rise when the network is busy** and fall when it's quiet. A higher fee generally confirms faster.

You always need a little of a network's **native coin** to pay its fees — e.g. ETH to move tokens on Ethereum. See [Networks, Coins & Tokens](/docs/learn/networks-and-tokens).

## On your KeepKey

- KeepKey performs the signing **inside the device**. The transaction's recipient and amount appear on the device screen, and nothing is signed until you approve with a physical button press — see [Verifying Transactions](/docs/desktop/verify-on-device).
- Send your first transaction in [Send & Receive](/docs/desktop/send-receive).
- Trading one coin for another? The built-in [Swap](/docs/desktop/swap) builds the transactions for you — and you still confirm each one on the device.