Role of “confirmation” attribute,listwallettransactions

Question

By using "MultiChain API", created a blockchain over 2 nodes in AWS.

Created 3 "Assets" using following commands on 1st node :
issue 1VN1TPRteLNSAz8xzzUuUdEzsE9qGFhaG1KBf asset1 1000 0.01
issue 1VN1TPRteLNSAz8xzzUuUdEzsE9qGFhaG1KBf asset2 1000 0.01
issue 1VN1TPRteLNSAz8xzzUuUdEzsE9qGFhaG1KBf asset3 1000 0.01

In order to confirm this transaction, executed following command:
listwallettransactions

My question is, why "Attribute: confirmation", iis increasing "incrementally(after every few seconds)" AND "variably (i.e. 33,22 & 11)" ?

Is it some kind of "Consensus Building" algorithm in action, in this regard ?

 

Answer 1

The confirmations value shows 1 when a transaction enters a block for the first time, then continues increasing as more blocks are built on top of that one. It's a measure of finality, given the nature of the consensus protocol.

Comments

I have a single block (i.e. genesis block) in my block chain, which is just created.
Although no transaction (e.g. granting access, transferring asset etc.) is initiated, But still, I am seeing "conformations: 4".
And it's incrementing, incrementing, incrementing and reached till "57".
If I don't misunderstood, then, it's happening because under the hood, new blocks are mined by my multichain server. Correct or This is Wrong ?

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Yes, exactly. To understand the policy of mining blocks when there are no new transactions, see the documentation on mine-empty-rounds here:

http://www.multichain.com/developers/blockchain-parameters/

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That helped. I created new chain and configured "mine-empty-rounds: 5".

Executed my newly created chain and able to see "confirmations:5".

But, why it is named as "confirmations" and not "availableBlocks" ?

Is it because of the phenomenon of confirmation, which traverses through the entire "block-structure", to verify validity of new blocks, along with the validity of the entire block chain ?

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The "confirmations" field is the number of blocks in the chain since that transaction was confirmed, so it's not the total number of blocks in the chain.

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You are right.

For parameter configuration, *setup-first-blocks = 5* , I can see "confirmation:5", for "block-0" generation.

Said value of "confirmation:5", changed to "confirmation:7", when I executed transaction for granting access to 2nd node.

Increment of "2" happened because of the parameter confirmation of  *mine-empty-rounds = 2*

Thank you very much.