What happens when I send a transaction to myself?

Question

I used a private key to send a transaction to its corresponding public key. The transaction got confirmed after a few minutes. My balance stayed unchanged.

What exactly happened between the moment that I completed the PoW, and the moment that the Tangle confirmed the transaction? I want to know the chronological steps of how said transaction was handled by the Tangle.

Answer 1

Nobody knows that you are sending iotas to an address that was generated from the same seed, so the steps when you do that or you when send iotas to a third party are exactly the same.

1. (skipping steps before POW completion)
2. The node you are connected to receive your transaction and persist the transaction in it's local database
3. The node you are connected to broadcast your transaction to it's neighbors
4. The neighbors broadcast the transaction to their neighbors, etc (this is the Gossip protocol : your transaction is propagated in the whole network) (At this point your new transaction is seen as a tip)
5. During the broadcast or even a bit later, the following will hopefully occurs : your transaction is selected by the tip selection algorithm (on a random node) so that a new transaction approve your transaction. (If this occurs on the coordinator you will have a milestone directly validating your transaction)
6. (let's assume that your transaction was not selected by the tip selection algorithm on the coordinator) At some point, a milestone transaction will validate one of the transaction indirectly approving your transaction.
7. That's it : your transaction is indirectly validated by a milestone : the Tangle will consider it as fully confirmed.
8. Your wallet will see that a fully confirmed transaction transfer amount X from your address A, and at the same time a fully confirmed transaction make a deposit of amount X to your address B. The wallet make the addition -X+X=0 and your total balance remains unchanged.