When creating or editing contributions (such as changing it's status, type, amount etc.) a financial transaction will be created.
They could be considered a "change log for contributions" and are often used for accounting purposes (e.g. exporting them for your accounting software).
As many organisations don't need them, they are not prominently exposed in the UI. However, out of the box, there are some reports and export features for them, and of course you could use the search kit to display / use them in various ways.
If you would like to learn more about financial transactions and how to use them I would recommend the following sources:
https://civicrm.org/blog/erikhommel/to-have-or-not-to-have-financial-transactions
https://docs.civicrm.org/dev/en/latest/financial/financialentities/
https://docs.civicrm.org/user/en/latest/contributions/key-concepts-and-configurations/