hi all, newbie here
i am trying to understand the bitcoin transaction verification process in depth. as i understand it, it is possible to prove that a transaction has legitimately claimed the output of a previous transaction. to do this, i would need to perform an operation on the transaction and obtain the result of the previous output address. since the transaction is not mine, i do not own the private key of the output address, so it seems that all the information i need is purely contained within the transaction and the output of the previous transaction (which can be identified via the txid hash and index specified within the later transaction).
i found this code which has a function called "verify_message" -
https://github.com/nanotube/supybot-bitcoin-marketmonitor/blob/master/GPG/local/bitcoinsig.pywill this function verify that a transaction is legitimately linked to a previous output address? if so then what are the inputs that need to be used? the address i know, and i'm guessing that the signature is the scriptsig of the latest transaction, but what is the "message" argument? is it something like the hash of the latest transaction?
can someone please help. i'd like to actually implement a test in python using some data from the blockexplorer.com website.
many thanks in advance!