Every time someone sends Bitcoin, swaps tokens on Ethereum, or mints an NFT on Solana, a series of cryptographic steps executes in seconds that would have taken days through traditional financial infrastructure. Understanding how those steps work is no longer optional for participants in a market that processes trillions of dollars monthly. Stablecoin volumes alone exceeded $2 trillion per month in 2025, according to Chainalysis statistics, while Ethereum recorded 2.086 million daily transactions as of June 2026, according to YCharts data. This article breaks down how cryptocurrency networks operate at each stage, ... (full story)