Making a Transaction
As previously mentioned, in IOTA there are no miners. As such the process of making a transaction is different from any Blockchain out there today. The process in IOTA looks as follows:
- Signing: You sign the transaction inputs with your private keys. This can be done offline.
- Tip Selection: MCMC is used to randomly select two tips, which will be referenced by your transaction (branchTransaction and trunkTransaction)
- Proof of Work:In order to have your transaction accepted by the network, you need to do some Proof of Work - similar to Hashcash, not Bitcoin (spam and sybil-resistance). This usually takes a few minutes on a modern pc.
After this is completed, the trunkTransaction, branchTransaction and nonce of the transaction object should be updated. This means that you can broadcast the transaction to the network now and wait for it to be approved by someone else.