Where and how are raw transactions stored on the blockchain?

Question

My understanding is that transactions are stored on the blockchain in double hashed format: ie SHA256(SHA256(rawtransaction)). But it is also possible to get access to the raw transaction. This means that the raw transaction data must be stored somewhere. So where is the raw transaction data stored, if it isn't stored on the blockchain? Or was my initial statement incorrect about transactions being stored in double hashed format? I don't think the raw transaction data can be extracted by reversing the double hash operation.

Answer 1

This is a question of definition.

The blockchain doesn't store anything, it's an abstract data structure that's collectively maintained by nodes in a network. Those nodes are the ones that store things. That may or may not include the actual transaction data - it doesn't matter.

The Bitcoin blockchain consists of hash-linked block headers. Every block header contains the hash of the previous block header. Every block header also contains a hash of all the transaction hashes in it (through a Merkle tree). Those transaction hashes obviously are hashes of the transaction data itself.

That's a definition of the structure all nodes need to agree on, because it involves hashes, and those hashes need to match. But what they actually store of that is their own business. Full nodes with unpruned history will store all transactions and all blocks. Pruned nodes may store all transactions and blocks down to a particular point in history. More lightweight nodes may only store the block headers plus transactions the user is interested in.

Answer 2

double hashed format: ie SHA256(SHA256(rawtransaction))

Your understanding of this is very, very wrong.

The data structure stored in a blockchain is not double hashed. Instead there are two hashes stored in the data structure.

Instead of SHA256(SHA256(rawtransaction)). You should visualize the blockchain data structure as:

struct Block {
    Transactions[] transactions;
    int256 nonce;
    int256 previousHash; // SHA256(previous.transactions + previous.nonce + previous.previousHash)
    int256 hash;         // SHA256(this.transactions + this.nonce + this.previousHash)
}

You can see, the data structure is linked to the previous block by including the hash of the previous block as part of its own data. This is the "chain" part of blockchain. The definition of the entire set of blocks is recursive because to calculate the hash of the previous block you need to calculate the hash of the block before that and so on until you get to the genesis block.

The raw committed transactions are part of the block.