Your First Transaction

Everything else in this track stands on one thing: you can send a transaction on LiteForge and prove it was you. That is the whole of this module. Fifteen minutes, most of it waiting for a faucet.

What a transaction actually is

A transaction is a signed instruction. Not a request — an instruction, already authorised, that any node can verify without asking you anything.

Six fields matter:

• from — never written down. It is recovered from the signature, which is why nobody can send a transaction pretending to be you.
• to — the recipient. Empty when you are deploying a contract.
• value — how much native token to move. On LiteForge that is zkLTC.
• nonce — how many transactions this account has sent before. It makes each transaction unique and forces them into a strict order.
• gas and gas price — how much work you will pay for, and the rate.
• data — the payload. Empty for a plain transfer, a function call for anything else.

Add the network

LiteForge is an ordinary EVM chain, so any EVM wallet works: MetaMask, Rabby, Coinbase Wallet, Rainbow.

1. 01

   Open your wallet's network settings

   Look for 'Add network' and then the manual or custom option. Automatic lists will not have LiteForge.

2. 02

   Enter the parameters

   Network name LitVM LiteForge, Chain ID 4441, RPC https://liteforge.rpc.caldera.xyz/http, currency symbol zkLTC, explorer https://liteforge.explorer.caldera.xyz

3. 03

   Switch to it

   Your balance will read 0 zkLTC. That is correct — a new chain means a new balance, even though the address is the same one you use everywhere else.

That last point is worth sitting with. Your address is not issued by a chain. It is derived from your private key, so the same address exists on every EVM chain at once, each with its own independent balance and history.

Get some zkLTC

Gas is not a fee somebody charges you. It is a measure of computation, and paying for it is what stops anyone from asking every node on the network to run an infinite loop for free.

Open the Caldera faucet, connect, and request testnet zkLTC.

If it errors, it is almost always rate limiting rather than anything you did. Pause your VPN or proxy and try again in a few minutes — Caldera throttles traffic that looks like it is coming from a datacentre.

Send it

Any transaction counts. The simplest is a transfer to yourself:

1. Press Send in your wallet.
2. Paste your own address as the recipient.
3. Send a small amount, 0.001 is plenty.
4. Confirm.

Sending to yourself is not a trick to dodge the exercise. The value comes back, the gas does not, and every field of a real transaction is exercised on the way.

Your wallet shows a transaction hash — 66 characters starting with 0x. That hash is the identifier of this transaction for the rest of time. Copy it.

Read what you just did

Open the hash in the explorer and find these:

• Status — success or reverted. A reverted transaction still costs gas, because the work was still done before it failed.
• Block — which block included it. Before that number existed, your transaction was only a promise.
• Nonce — 0 if this was your first ever transaction from this address.
• Gas used vs gas limit — a plain transfer uses exactly 21,000, the floor price of any transaction on any EVM chain. Unused gas is refunded, so the limit is a ceiling rather than a price.
• Input data — 0x, empty. Nothing was called.

Send some to somebody else

Sending to yourself proved the mechanics. Sending to another person proves the part that matters: there is nobody in the middle, and nothing to appeal to.

1. 01

   Ask them for their address

   Any EVM address works — the one they use on Ethereum, Base or anywhere else is the same address here. What differs is the balance, which is per chain.

2. 02

   Check both wallets are on 4441

   Yours to send from, theirs to see it arrive. A recipient on the wrong network sees nothing and assumes it is lost.

3. 03

   Send a small amount

   Paste their address, 0.01 zkLTC, confirm. Their balance updates as soon as the block lands, with nothing to accept on their side.

4. 04

   Send them the hash, not a screenshot

   The transaction hash is checkable by anyone on the explorer. A screenshot proves nothing at all.

If the amount does not appear for them, the cause is almost always one of two things: they are looking at a different network, or the network they added has the right name and the wrong chain id. Have them compare against the network parameters.

Where the zkLTC came from

Worth knowing what you are actually holding. LitVM is an Arbitrum Orbit rollup that settles to Litecoin, and zkLTC is the gas token that represents LTC inside it. On mainnet, that representation is backed by real LTC bridged non-custodially through BitcoinOS's Grail bridge.

On testnet it is backed by a faucet and a friendly attitude. Which is exactly why you can afford to make mistakes here.

What to remember

• 01A transaction is a signed instruction, and `from` is recovered from the signature rather than stated in it.
• 02The nonce orders your transactions and is what makes replaying an old one impossible.
• 03One address exists on every EVM chain at once, with a separate balance on each.
• 04Gas prices computation, not intent: a reverted transaction still costs gas.
• 05A plain transfer costs exactly 21,000 gas, and unspent gas within the limit is refunded.

Primary sources

• Adding LiteForge to a wallet — LitVM docs
• Faucet — LitVM docs
• Block explorer — LitVM docs

Your first transaction

Paste the hash of a transaction you sent on LiteForge. The check reads the transaction straight from LiteForge, so it has to be one your own wallet sent.

Connect wallet