Extrinsic

An extrinsic (also called transaction) is a call sent to the chain that gets executed.

There are three types of extrinsics:

Signed extrinsics (also called signed transactions) are sent by users and signed with their private key. The signature can be verified by anyone using the corresponding public key.

Unsigned extrinsics are not signed by a user but still require some form of validation. They are typically submitted by off-chain workers.

Inherents are not manually sent by users, but are part of the natural behavior of the chain — for example, setting the timestamp or validator heartbeats.

Learn more

See the Polkadot documentation for a deeper dive into how transactions work in the Substrate/Polkadot ecosystem.