What is meant by 'address is not spendable'?

Question

The Cardano native token documentation explains how the the native tokens can be transacted and that a fee in ada is required for the transaction (min-ada-value). They continue with 'If the address is not spendable by the user that is sending the tokens, the ada sent alongside the tokens no longer belongs to the sender'. (link to documentation)

I don't fully understand this. Does it mean that when the 'min-ada-value' is not sufficient, the amount of ada that was included in the output does not belong to sender anymore? And are the custom tokens transferred to receiving party? Why is this transaction not 'canceled /rejected' when 'min-ada-value' is not sufficient?

Best regards, Gijs

Answer 1

The text says "address is not spendable by the user sending the tokens" rather than "address is not spendable". This basically means an address you do not control.

My understanding is that this is just highlighting that the minimum ADA you need to include is going with the token to the recipient. If you're sending it to someone else (eg. not another of your own addresses) then you can no longer spend that ADA (eg., it went to the other address along with the token).

There's a box underneath that says:

Before transferring custom tokens, users may choose to use off-chain communication to negotiate who supplies the ada to cover the min-ada-value in the output made by the transferring transaction.

So in the case that I'm sending you some tokens, we might want to agree who is going to cover the ADA that I need to also send with them.