Ethereum transactions

Transactions explained

In general, transactions on the Ethereum blockchain are any action initiated by an externally owned account (EOA), so by a human, not by a contract. For example, Mike sends 2 ETH to Kim. Mike’s account is debited and Kim’s credited. 

Ethereum transactions on the blockchain

Let’s have a look at the example. We can see similar data that appeared in Bitcoin transactions too. 

Hash - a TxHash or transaction hash is a unique 66-character identifier that is generated whenever a transaction is executed.

Status - the status of the transaction.

Block - number of the block in which the transaction is recorded. Block confirmations indicate how many blocks have been added since the transaction was mined.

Timestamp - the date and time at which the transaction was mined.

From - the account which is the sender of the transaction

To - the recipient of the transaction (could be the contract address)

Value - an amount of Ether transacted

Transaction fee - the amount paid to the miner for processing the transaction.

Gas price - cost per unit of gas specified for the transaction, in Ether and gwei. The higher the gas price, the higher chance of getting included in the block.

Ethereum block on the blockchain

Block height - also known as block number. The block height which indicates the length of the blockchain, increases after the addition of the new block.

Timestamp - the date and time at which the block was mined.

Transactions - the number of transactions in the block. Internal transactions are transactions as a result of contract execution that involves Ether value.

Mined by - a miner who successfully included the block onto the blockchain.

Block reward - for each block, the miner is rewarded with a finite amount of Ether on top of the fees paid for all transactions in the block. 

Uncle reward - An uncle block has a significantly lower reward than a normal block. Uncles reward is valid but rejected as it is not on the longest chain which is

the working mechanism of the blockchain. Uncle block is important in Ethereum as it secures the blockchain.

Difficulty - The amount of effort required to mine a new block. The difficulty algorithm may adjust according to time.

Total difficulty - the total difficulty of the chain until this block.

Size - The block size is actually determined by the block's gas limit.

Gas used - the total gas used in the block and its percentage of gas filled in the block

Gas limit - Total gas limit provided by all transactions in the block

Base fee per gas - Post-London Upgrade, this represents the minimum gasUsed multiplier required for a be to be included in a block

Burnt fees - Post-London Upgrade, this represents the part of the tx fee that is burnt: basoFeePerGas * gasUsed

Types of transactions

On Ethereum there are a few different types of transactions:

• Regular transactions: a transaction from one account to another.
• Contract deployment transactions: a transaction without a “to” address, where the data field is used for the contract code.
• Execution of the contract: a transaction that interacts with a deployed smart contract. In this case, the “to” address is a smart contract address. 

Gas

Gas refers to the unit that measures the amount of computational effort required to

execute specific operations on the Ethereum network.

Since each Ethereum transaction requires computational resources to execute, each

transaction requires a fee. Gas refers to the fee required to conduct a transaction on

Ethereum successfully.

Gas fees are paid in Ethereum's native currency, ether (ETH). Gas prices are denoted in

gwei, which itself is a denomination of ETH - each gwei is equal to 0.000000001 ETH

(10-9 ETH). For example, instead of saying that your gas costs 0.000000001 ether, you

can say your gas costs 1 gwei. The word 'gwei' itself means 'giga-wei', and it is equal to

1,000,000,000 wei. Wei itself (named after Wei Dai2 , creator of b-money. 2 ) is the

smallest unit of ETH.