Demystify Transaction signing process

Question

Can someone explain in layman term, why the transaction needs to be signed and the role of public key, private key in transaction signing process. From what I have read so far:

1. When user creates a new Account, specifies passphrase. Privatekey is generated and stored in keystore file. (encrypted using passphrase).
2. When sending transaction, Passphrase is used to decrypt the keystore and retrieve private key.
3. Private key is used to sign transaction. Signed transaction is published by the node.
4. Receiving node uses public key (how other nodes get public key?) to verify
   signature. If valid, transaction is processed.

Pls let me know if above understanding is correct and help to understand questions raised in the workflow.

Answer 1

This is basically correct. In (4), any node can receive a transaction, check the signature and relay it to other nodes.

The public key can be recovered from the signature, so it doesn't need to be passed around or looked up from anywhere. (This is different from Bitcoin, which wastes bandwidth by passing public keys around in spending transactions; Satoshi doesn't seem to have been that deep into cryptography.)