A brief introduction to Ethereum Blockchain
We use the bitcoin blockchain for sending money between various parties with none centralized authorities like banks. With the release of the Ethereum blockchain, which is not limited to sending money, a global, open-source platform becomes a reality for decentralized applications.
Introduction
Ethereum is a public, permissionless blockchain, which means anyone can see the data stored in it and can start the mining of the blocks. You can also think of it as one large computer made of small computers (also called nodes) across the world. All these computers are connected and have a full copy of the code and data.
Ethereum concepts one should know
Smart Contracts
We can write applications in Solidity and Vyper programming languages and deploy them on the Ethereum blockchain. We know these applications as Smart Contracts.
You must think about why we call them Smart Contracts. A contract is an agreement between two or more parties intended to be enforced by law. If we convert this written contract into code and deploy it on the blockchain, then that is a digital contract. This digital contract can now enforce the agreement between parties because once deployed on the blockchain, the code can neither be halted nor changed. And that’s why they are called “Smart Contracts”.
Ether
In the actual world, we have currencies like INR, USD, KWR, etc. the same way Ethereum has its native currency called Ether. You can check the current price of Ether here. Also, the real world currencies have various denominations like for INR we have 1 rupee, 10 rupees, 100 rupees, etc, the same way we have various denominations in Ethereum and the two most important one is — 1 Wei (lowest denomination) and 1 Ether (1018 Wei). Wei is the one we use in smart contracts.
Ethereum Address
An address in Ethereum blockchain is a 160-bit number like — “0x4831e7dB0c20ECbbe87E0E23c532cdFBffaec3E3” which acts as an identity in the Ethereum blockchain. It is public and you can share it with anyone. An address also has a corresponding private key which acts as a password and needs to be kept secret from others. How to generate an Ethereum address?
Ethereum Account
Ethereum has two types of accounts — Externally owned accounts (EOA) and Contract accounts. EOAs is a combination of public address and private key, while CAs do not have corresponding private keys. It generates contract accounts when we deploy contracts on the blockchain. Accounts can also hold balance (ether) and can send transactions.
Ethereum Wallet
Ethereum wallets can be software-based or hardware-based and are used to store and manage Ethereum accounts. Wallets are of 2 types — Deterministic Wallets and Non-Deterministic Wallets.
Byte Code
In Ethereum, we write smart contracts on high-level programming languages such as Solidity and Vyper. These smart contracts code gets compiled to EVM bytecode, which gets deployed to the Ethereum blockchain. The bytecode received after the compilation of smart contracts is in compact binary representation (.bin file).
EVM
The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is a powerful, Turing complete state machine that works with a word count of 256 bits. It is used to execute the EVM Byte Code and is part of the Ethereum protocol.
Conclusion
Blockchain is a groundbreaking technology with the potential to disrupt most fields whether we relate it to Finance, Medical, or Supply Chain. Ethereum is one blockchain that has given the world a unique perspective of blockchain technology and its applications by introducing the concept of Decentralised applications (Dapps). This is a quick overview of the Ethereum blockchain and its related concepts. If you are interested in exploring more, you can consider the following resources.
- Crypto Zombies: A platform for learning Solidity and building Dapps. I like it. :)
- Ethernaut: It is a war game with many challenges. Solve each level to gain advanced knowledge.
- Capture the Ether: Another wonderful challenge to learn smart contract securities.
- Truffle Suite: A suite of tools for building Dapps. They have tutorials for Dapps.
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