101 Key Points About Ethereum

1. Ethereum is the “next-generation smart contract and decentralized application platform” (see here [4] )

2. Ethereum is a blockchain with an integrated Turing-complete programming language that allows anyone to write smart contracts and decentralized applications where they can create their own arbitrary rules for ownership, transaction formats, and state transition functions. (see here [5] )

3. Ethereum is an open-source, globally decentralized computing infrastructure that executes programs called smart contracts. It uses blockchain technology to sync and store the system’s state changes, as well as a cryptocurrency called Ether to meter and constrain execution resource costs. It is often described as the “world computer”. (see here [6] )

4. The Ethereum platform enables developers to build powerful decentralized applications with built-in economic functions. While providing high availability, auditability, transparency, and neutrality, it also reduces or eliminates rent-seeking intermediaries and lowers certain counterparty risks. (see here [7] )

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5. Ethereum’s primary purpose is not to be a digital currency payment network. Although the digital currency Ether is indispensable and essential for Ethereum’s operation, Ether is intended to function as a practical currency to pay for using the Ethereum platform as a world computer. (see here [8] )

6. Unlike Bitcoin, which has a very limited scripting language, Ethereum is designed as a general-purpose programmable blockchain that runs a virtual machine capable of executing arbitrary and complex code. Bitcoin’s scripting language is intentionally limited to performing simple true/false evaluations of spending conditions, while Ethereum’s language is Turing-complete, which means Ethereum can directly act as a universal computer. (see here [9] )

7. The original blockchain, Bitcoin’s blockchain, tracks the state of Bitcoin units and their ownership. You can think of Bitcoin as a distributed consensus state machine where transactions cause global state transitions that change ownership of the currency. State transitions are constrained by consensus rules that allow all participants to (eventually) converge on a common (consensus) state of the system after mining multiple blocks. Ethereum is also a distributed state machine. But instead of only tracking the state of currency ownership, Ethereum tracks the state transitions of a general-purpose data store, which can save any data that can be represented as a key-value tuple. (see here [10] )

8. Ethereum’s core components (see here [11] ):

1. P2P network: Ethereum runs on the Ethereum mainnet and is addressable on TCP port 30303, running a connection protocol called “ÐΞVp2p” (devp2p).

2. Transactions: Ethereum transactions are network messages that include (among other things) senders, receivers, values, and data payloads.

3. State machine: Ethereum state transitions are handled by the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), a stack-based virtual machine that can execute bytecode (machine language instructions). EVM programs, called “smart contracts”, are written in high-level languages such as Solidity or Vyper and compiled to bytecode for execution on the EVM.

4. Data structures: Ethereum’s state is stored locally on each node as a database (typically Google’s LevelDB) containing transactions and system state serialized in a hashed data structure called a Merkle Patricia Tree.

9. Ethereum’s core components (continually updated):

1. Consensus algorithm: Ethereum previously used Bitcoin’s consensus model, Nakamoto Consensus, to determine the longest chain by weighting importance with Proof of Work (PoW), but now Ethereum has transitioned to a Proof of Stake (PoS) algorithm.

2. Economic security: Ethereum currently uses a PoW algorithm called Ethash, but is transitioning to a PoS algorithm in Ethereum 2.0.

3. Clients: Ethereum has multiple interoperable client software implementations, with the most prominent being Go-Ethereum (Geth) and OpenEthereum. Others include Erigon, Nethermind, and Turbo-geth. OpenEthereum is being deprecated in favor of Erigon, formerly known as Turbo-geth. (see here [12] )

10. Ethereum is capable of executing stored programs in a state machine called the Ethereum Virtual Machine, while reading and writing data in memory, making it a Turing-complete system. Turing

    References :

    1. https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/

    2. https://ethereum.github.io/yellowpaper/paper.pdf

    3. https://github.com/ethereumbook/ethereumbook

    4. https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/

    5. https://ethereum.org/en/glossary/

    6. https://docs.soliditylang.org/

    7. https://preethikasireddy.medium.com/how-does-ethereum-work-anyway-22d1df506369

    8. https://takenobu-hs.github.io/downloads/ethereum_evm_illustrated.pdf

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