What is the lifecycle state of a transaction sent by a RPC websocket server?

Question

Let's say Bob is connected to the mainnet-beta RPC WebSocket, listening to Alice wallet.

If Alice creates a transaction from her client, and send it to mainnet-beta RPC. Does mainnet-beta:

1. directly send the transaction to Bob.
2. Send the transaction to the Leader, then wait for the signature of the modified state before sending the transaction to Bob.
3. something else.

Answer 1

When you connect to a RPC via websocket, you provide the commitment you are expecting on transactions.

This means:

1. Transaction will be converted to a UDP packet and broadcasted to current and following leaders
2. Transaction will be included in a block and that block will reach a level of commitment if successful
3. When specified commitment level is reached, you will receive the transaction from your websocket connection

Answer 2

Once you approve the transaction on the wallet, your request is sent to the load balancer. This load balancer is traffic controller for the rpc network. Load balancer checks the request and forwards it to the closest server. RPC server checks the transaction if it is a valid Solana transaction and then it makes sure that this request will arrive at validator without slowing down other requests' data pockets.

Validators' job is processing the requests and building blocks. The validator node looks at the transaction and makes sure that the sender sent a valid transaction, the receiver account is correct and the receiver is able to receive the sent amount. Validators can see the balances of the account. It basically verifies the transaction.

Once the transaction is approved, validators sent the transaction to the block