Any blockchain is bootstrap from an initial (genesis) state, which is then changed over time through transactions, or Actions as they are called in IoTeX. An action is fundamentally a packet of data, signed by a blockchain account, that instructs the blockchain to make some type of change to the distributed ledger. The action can be sent to any blockchain node acting as a gateway, that in turn broadcasts it to the entire network of nodes for verification and, eventually it get applied and stored forever in the Ledger.
In IoTeX there are different types of Actions, depending on the type of operation that is required to perform:
Transfer Action
A transfer is an action initiated by an account, intended to transfer a certain amount of IOTX tokens owned by that account (sender) into another account (recipient).
Execution Action
An execution is an action initiated by an account, intended to run the code associated with a smart contract account.
Governance Actions
Governance actions are low level actions between an account and the blockchain itself, intended to manage the voting mechanism, delegate registrations and rewards.
GrantReward is the action initiated by the blockchain, to grant either block or epoch reward to a delegate
ClaimFromRewardingFund is the action initiated by an account to claim delegate reward from the granted rewards fund
DepositToRewardingFund is the action initiated by the blockchain to deposit a delegate reward to the rewarding fund
CandidateRegister is the action to register a candidate
CandidateUpdate is the action to update a candidate data
CreateStake defines the action of stake creation
Restake defines the action of stake again with different options
DepositToStake defines the action of stake add deposit
TransferStake defines the action of transfering stake ownership to another account
Unstake defines the action of unstake
WithdrawStake defines the action of stake withdraw
Find the structure for all IoTeX Actions in the protobuf definition on GitHub:
