The final character of a transaction confirmed on a chain, depriving the insurer of any recovery and making the loss always total.
Irreversibility is the impossibility of undoing a transaction confirmed on a chain, one of crypto's two founding promises. It collides with a fundamental mechanism of insurance, for in classical finance a fraudulent transaction can be reversed, a card blocked, a transfer recalled, so the loss is often recoverable and the insurer intervenes as a last resort. On a chain, the stolen funds are gone with no possible recall, and the insurer therefore insures a loss that is always total, never partly recoverable, which worsens its exposure and raises the premium. The irreversibility that is crypto's strength as money is its weakness as an insurable object.
Stealing an NFT is neither a classical theft nor a mere error, but a deception exploiting irreversibility, a category existing policies struggle to grasp.
transaction irréversible, finalité de la transaction