So how does a smart contract platform work? Just like bitcoin, lots and lots of people run the software, and get a few tokens (ether) for doing it. Those computers in the network all work together and share a common database, called the blockchain. Bitcoin’s blockchain stores financial transactions. Ethereum’s blockchain stores smart contracts. You don’t rent space in a data center and hire a bunch of system administrators. Rather, you use the shared global resource, the “world computer” and the resources you put into the system go to the people whose computers make up this global resource. The system is fair and equitable.
