Monero adds a block about every two minutes, and a Monero wallet shows a payment only once it has synced. What that means when you send XMR to a swap, and when you receive it.
Many of the swaps people asked Cambio for this week had Monero on one side: XMR to BTC, BTC to XMR, XMR to LTC. Two questions come with them: why the deposit takes longer than on other coins, and why the XMR has not appeared in the wallet yet. Both come from how Monero works.
Sending XMR: the deposit waits for its confirmations
Monero adds a new block about every two minutes. A swap starts once your deposit has the confirmations the route needs, so an XMR deposit takes longer to clear than one on a fast chain such as Tron or Solana.
- The deposit card says how many confirmations your swap waits for, and counts them as they come in.
- You can close the page while you wait. Nothing needs you: the swap goes on, and the tracking link shows where it is.
- If you send from an exchange, it may hold the withdrawal for its own checks before it reaches the network. The confirmations start only once the transaction is on the chain.
Receiving XMR: your wallet has to sync
A Monero wallet shows an incoming payment only after it has scanned the chain up to the block that holds it. When the card says your XMR was sent and the wallet shows nothing, the wallet is usually still syncing.
- Let the wallet finish syncing. If it still shows nothing, rescan the blockchain from the wallet’s settings.
- An exchange account credits incoming XMR after its own confirmations, so it can appear there later than the card says it was sent.
- The card shows the payout’s transaction ID. A Monero block explorer can show that the transaction exists and count its confirmations, but not the amount or the addresses: Monero hides them by design.
The Monero address
A Monero address is long: 95 characters, starting with 4 or 8 (an integrated address, which carries a payment ID, has 106). Cambio checks that the address you paste has that shape before it accepts it, but it cannot know whether the address is yours. After pasting, compare the first and last few characters with your wallet.
