Transaction Type Reference

In the Ledger Services Kit Core Client, the Transaction type is a crucial part of transaction management. This reference guide aims to provide an in-depth understanding of the structure of the Transaction type.

Overview

The Transaction type is used to describe an unsigned transaction. It’s an umbrella type that can represent transactions of various cryptocurrency families. For example, it could be an Ethereum transaction, a Bitcoin transaction, or others.

Common Fields for All Transactions

Regardless of the specific cryptocurrency, all transactions share some common fields.

Fields:

family (string): The cryptocurrency family to which the transaction belongs. This could be ‘ethereum’, ‘bitcoin’, etc.
amount (BigNumber): The amount of cryptocurrency to be sent in the transaction, represented in the smallest unit of the currency. For instance, in Bitcoin, an amount of 1 represents 0.00000001 BTC.
recipient (string): The address of the recipient of the transaction.

Cryptocurrency Specific Fields

In addition to the common fields, each cryptocurrency family might have additional fields specific to its network.

Ethereum Transaction Example

For instance, an Ethereum transaction could have the following fields:

nonce (number, optional): This is the number of transactions sent from the sender’s address.
data (Buffer, optional): Input data of the transaction. This is often used for contract interactions.
gasPrice (BigNumber, optional): The price per gas in wei.
gasLimit (BigNumber, optional): The maximum amount of gas provided for the transaction.
maxPriorityFeePerGas (BigNumber, optional): Maximum fee per gas to be paid for a transaction to be included in a block.
maxFeePerGas (BigNumber, optional): Maximum fee per gas willing to be paid for a transaction.

Here is how a typical Ethereum transaction might look:

const ethereumTransaction = {
  family: "ethereum",
  amount: new BigNumber(100000000000000),
  recipient: "0xRecipientAddress",
  nonce: 2,
  data: Buffer.from("SomeDataInHex", "hex"),
  gasPrice: new BigNumber(20000000000),
  gasLimit: new BigNumber(21000),
};

Raw Transactions

There are also raw representations of transactions, often used when serializing the transaction data. The common fields in raw transactions are similar to the regular transaction type but serialized into strings or other primitive types.

TransactionSign and TransactionSignAndBroadcast Types

TransactionSign and TransactionSignAndBroadcast are types that define the parameters and the expected results for the respective functions, sign and signAndBroadcast in the Ledger Services Kit Core Client’s Transaction module.

TransactionSign Type

Parameters:

accountId (string, required): The ID of the account where the transaction will be made.
rawTransaction (RawTransaction, required): The transaction object in a raw, serialized format specific to the cryptocurrency family.
options (object, optional):
hwAppId (string, optional): A hardware wallet application ID.
meta (object, optional): Metadata for the transaction in the format { [key: string]: unknown }.

Results:

signedTransactionHex (string): The hexadecimal string representation of the signed transaction.

Type Definition:

type TransactionSign = {
  params: {
    accountId: string,
    rawTransaction: RawTransaction,
    options?: {
      hwAppId?: string
    },
    meta?: Record<string, unknown>
  },
  result: {
    signedTransactionHex: string
  }
};

TransactionSignAndBroadcast Type

Parameters:

accountId (string, required): The ID of the account where the transaction will be made.
rawTransaction (RawTransaction, required): The transaction object in a raw, serialized format specific to the cryptocurrency family.
options (object, optional):
hwAppId (string, optional): A hardware wallet application ID.
meta (object, optional): Metadata for the transaction in the format { [key: string]: unknown }.

Results:

transactionHash (string): The hash of the transaction once it’s been broadcasted to the network.

Type Definition:

type TransactionSignAndBroadcast = {
  params: {
    accountId: string,
    rawTransaction: RawTransaction,
    options?: {
      hwAppId?: string
    },
    meta?: Record<string, unknown>
  },
  result: {
    transactionHash: string
  }
};

Notes

The rawTransaction parameter in both types expects the transaction object to be in a raw, serialized format, which is different from the regular Transaction object. You may need to convert your transaction object into this raw format before calling these functions.
The hwAppId option can be used if you are interacting with a hardware wallet. It is an optional field, and is not required if you are not using a hardware wallet.

Manifest Migration Guide