Pay and get paid
A payment in Railroad Network is a conversation between two people, witnessed by the station, with a pause built in before it becomes final.
The three steps
- Propose. You sign a payment to someone’s address for an amount. The software checks it would not take you below the debt floor and sends it to the station.
- Confirm. The receiver sees the proposal and confirms it. Nothing moves yet. Confirming starts the settlement window.
- Settle. When the window closes with no dispute, the station records the settlement and both balances move. The payment is now final.
A proposal that is never confirmed simply expires. Either party can also cancel before settlement.
You can also request a payment: you sign a request, the payer confirms it. The debt-floor check then runs against the payer at confirmation time.
The settlement window
| Payment size | Tier | Window |
|---|---|---|
| Small | Tier 1 | 24 hours |
| Larger | Tier 2 | 48 hours |
| 50 Commons and up | Tier 3 | Not available yet: the payment is refused, not shrunk |
The window is the community’s chance to catch a mistake or a lie. During it, either party can contest the payment, which freezes settlement until a jury rules. If nobody contests, it settles.
Larger (Tier 2) payments ask more of the person confirming: they need enough standing to stake on it, and an upheld dispute costs them some of that standing. This is what makes confirming a real-world trade you did not actually receive a bad idea.
Payments at or above 50 Commons would need evidence the software cannot yet weigh, so for now they are refused outright. Split a large trade into smaller payments over time, or wait for a later phase.
What “pending” means
Your balance screen shows two numbers: what has settled, and what is pending (confirmed but still in its window, or signed but not yet delivered to the station). Pending amounts already count against your debt floor, so you cannot spend the same headroom twice.
In the app, a payment that cannot reach the station is not sent at all: the app tells you and you try again when connected. The command-line wallet keeps a signed payment pending until it reaches the station, over Wi-Fi later or on paper. See When the network is down.
Good habits
- Confirm only what you actually received. Confirming is the moment you put your standing behind the claim that the trade happened.
- Contest inside the window. After settlement the payment is final; the only remedy is a new payment the other way.
- Link marketplace payments to the listing. Paying for an agreed inquiry from the marketplace records what the payment was for, which helps if it is ever disputed.