Each row is one card. The middle column is the heading of the card and the right hand column is the thing you are waiting for, which is often not the thing people think they are waiting for. That mismatch is the reason the right hand column exists at all.
Scan the right hand column first. It is faster than scanning the headings, because several waits have unremarkable names and very specific contents.
Seconds
| No | The wait | What you are waiting for |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | The address answering | the client and the service to arrange a meeting point and the first bytes to come back |
| 02 | The first screen painting | the page to arrive as bytes and the browser to have enough of it to draw |
| 03 | The captcha picture appearing | a small image to be generated for your visit and sent separately from the page it sits in |
| 04 | The pause after you press sign in | the form to reach the service and a decision about it to come back |
| 05 | A one time code rolling over | the current code to run out so the next one can be used from the start of its life |
| 06 | A search coming back | a query to reach the catalogue and a page of results to make the trip back |
| 07 | Reading the address string again | nothing on the network, only for your own eyes to finish comparing the string |
Minutes
| No | The wait | What you are waiting for |
|---|---|---|
| 08 | The gate screen holding you | the layer in front of the market to decide it can pass your request through |
| 09 | Building another circuit | a fresh route through the network to be negotiated hop by hop |
| 10 | The account being made | a submitted registration to become an account you can sign into |
| 11 | A first confirmation on a deposit | the network to settle a payment the market has not been told about yet |
| 12 | The balance catching up | the market to notice a settlement the network has already agreed on |
| 13 | The order going through | money to move, escrow to open and an order record to be written |
| 14 | A page that half arrived | the rest of a page that started arriving and then stopped |
| 15 | A cooldown after failed tries | a limiter to release an account after a run of failed attempts |
| 16 | A withdrawal being sent | the market to sign and broadcast a payout it has already accepted |
An evening
| No | The wait | What you are waiting for |
|---|---|---|
| 17 | A deposit reaching enough confirmations | the payment to sit deep enough in the chain for the market to treat it as final |
| 18 | A vendor reading your message | a person on the far side to open their inbox and work down to what you sent |
| 19 | An address coming back | a string that has gone quiet to answer again, without knowing which layer stopped it |
| 20 | An order being accepted | a vendor to open the order, decide they can fill it, and mark it accepted |
| 21 | A captcha you keep failing | a gate to stop refusing you, which usually means elapsed time rather than a better answer |
| 22 | Maintenance finishing | planned work to end, on a schedule set by people who are not talking to you |
| 23 | The pause you add yourself | nothing on the far side. This is the only wait where the thing that changes is you |
Days
| No | The wait | What you are waiting for |
|---|---|---|
| 24 | A parcel moving | a line of text somebody else has to update before it says anything new |
| 25 | A dispute being looked at | a stranger to reach your case in a queue and read what you already filed |
| 26 | Escrow running down to auto release | a countdown you did not start to reach an edge somebody else set |
| 27 | A vendor gone quiet | a reply that may be late, or may not be coming at all |
| 28 | A refund being agreed | two people to settle a figure, and then for somebody to enter it |
| 29 | The published set changing | a change you cannot see to become a change you have heard about |
| 30 | A support ticket | a queue owned by the market to reach a question you wrote |
Open-ended
| No | The wait | What you are waiting for |
|---|---|---|
| 31 | A market that has not come back | a service that has stopped answering to answer again, with no way to tell whether it will |
| 32 | An order that never arrives | something that may already have stopped being on its way, while the order record keeps its own time |
| 33 | Coins sent to the wrong place | a stranger to decide whether to send something back, which is a request and not a mechanism |
| 34 | An account locked without a reason | an explanation that markets of this shape have little reason to give, through a channel that acknowledges nothing |
| 35 | A vendor who stops for good | a reply from somebody who has already stopped, while the order clock runs in the background |
| 36 | Certainty that is not coming | a feeling of being sure, which nothing outside is positioned to supply |
How to pick a row
Work from how long it has been, not from what you think is broken. People are reliably wrong about what is broken during a wait and reliably right about how long they have been sitting there.
If it has been the length of a breath, the shortest band covers almost everything you can be looking at. If you have made tea, you are in minutes or beyond. If you have gone away and come back, the evening band is the right place to start, and the fact that you went away is itself a good sign that the wait was correctly sized.
Rows that are commonly mistaken for each other
| This one | Not this one | What separates them |
|---|---|---|
| A first confirmation on a deposit | A deposit reaching enough confirmations | The first is the network acknowledging that something exists. The second is the market accepting it as settled. They are separate waits in separate bands, and only the second one credits you. |
| The balance catching up | A deposit reaching enough confirmations | One is the market not having looked yet. The other is the network not having finished. Refreshing helps neither, but only one of them is on the market side at all. |
| An order being accepted | The order going through | Placing is a write on the market. Acceptance is a person deciding. The first finishes at the keyboard and the second does not. |
| An address coming back | A market that has not come back | From the outside these look identical for a while. The distinction is not something you can establish quickly, which is exactly why one sits in the evening band and one has no band at all. |
| A vendor gone quiet | A vendor who stops for good | Quiet has an end that you may not have reached. Gone does not, and the thing that ends it is a market side deadline rather than a reply. |
| A cooldown after failed tries | An account locked without a reason | A cooldown has a shape and drains on its own. A lock has neither, and the difference between them is usually only visible in hindsight. |
If nothing here matches
The register is finite and the world is not. If you are looking at something that is not on this list, the closest useful page is probably where the bands come from, which gives the five questions used to size an unfamiliar wait.
If you have been waiting long enough that the question has stopped being about duration, the open-ended band is the honest destination. Every card there names a condition that should end the wait, because none of them can name a length.
What this card is not. This table is not an index of everything that can go wrong. It is the list of waits this site has written a card for.