[Ethereum] Who confirms Ropsten and Rinkeby transactions

confirmationsevmmainnetnodesropsten

Basic or more like "fundamental" question I guess:

So if I got that right, each time someone runs Geth/Parity or other software they all become part of the EVM (ethereum virtual machine). However once you run this on port 8545 it's all mainnet…or maybe not?

Which still leads to my question: who confirms transactions on say Ropsten? Currrently I am sending many "succesfull" transaction to Ropsten contracts and I wait a few seconds for confirmation as if this is a real transfer occuring on the blockchain (mainnnet) but I am curious is this really done by miners using Geth or is it just fake time-waiting to appear as if someone really confirms those? Thanks!

Best Answer

  • Ropsten transactions are confirmed by miners on that POW network.
  • Rinkeby transactions are confirmed by specific authorized nodes run by the the Geth team. The Ethereum Foundation, Infura, AKASHA and others might also be involved.
    Non-validator nodes are run by others in the ethereum space such as PegaSys, Funfair, etc. You can see the list of Rinkeby nodes running here.

Ropsten is a Proof of work network that anyone can sync to, although, being a test network, its token isn't of value, so Ropsten ETH is given out in faucets like this. Technically, Ropsten has the closest conditions to the real mainnet.

Rinkeby is a Proof of Authority network, where the consensus mechanism is different from mainnet and only some select nodes can validate transactions.

Both of these solutions are less decentralized and less secure than mainnet, yet have advantages such as speed and ease of deployment and therefore are used for developing purposes.

Related Topic