Mr A.

Dekhinet
University of BATNA 2 / Computer Science Department
a.dekhinet@univ-batna2.dz
http://staff.univ-batna2.dz/dekhinet-abdelhamid

Chapter 4
Ethereum Blockchain Basics

Course : Architecture and Technology of Blockchain Classe : Master1 ISIDS

Ethereum
 Ethereum is a public blockchain, decentralized and
distributed computing platform
 Proposed in late 2013 by Vitalik Buterin (cryptocurrency
researcher and programmer)
 Not just money : Asset issuance, gambling, IoT, voting,
supply chain, document verification, hundreds of
applications
 Cryptocurrency : Ether (BTC fo BC)
 Ethereum Consensus : PoW (idem for BC)
 Hash function : Ethash (SHA 256 for BC)
 Blocktime : 14 seconds (10 minutes for BC)
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Ethereum
 Ethereum platform is a general purpose Blockchain or programmable
blockchain : Generalized Technology, in opposite to Bitcoin which is
dedicated to manage cryptocurrency
 Ethereum is often described and interpreted as a distributed global
computer “The world computer”
 Programmable blockchain
 Allows users to develop their own decentralized applications (dApps)
 Ethereum provides support for Turing-complete language for application
development
 Transactions record code, variables, the results of function calls, …
 Transactions are generated by a computer program : Smart Contract
 Application can be written in several languages, ranging from general-
purpose languages like Java, C++, Python, JavaScript, Golang to platform-
specific languages like Solidity for Ethereum or Bitcoin Script for Bitcoin.
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Ethereum

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Ethereum
 For execution, Ethereum provides a trusted and decentralised virtual
machine as runtime environment : Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
 EVM is a stack based processor.

Let's summarize
Ethereum : Programmable blockchain platform (Open Source)
Cryptocurrency : Ether
Solidity : Programming language
Smart Contract : Program
EVM : Execution runtime for Smart Contract written in Solidity
Compilation : Smart Contract is compiled into EVM assembly Byte Code

 To learn solidity go to https://remix.ethereum.org and you can

start programming smart contracts without having to create your
own Ethereum network platform.
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Ethereum : Ether units

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Ethereum : Single Node
Web development : JS,
HTML, …

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Ethereum
 From a computer science perspective, Ethereum is a deterministic but
practically unbounded state machine, consisting of a globally
accessible singleton state and a virtual machine that applies changes
to that state
 Ethereum can be perceived as a distributed transaction-based state
machine

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Ethereum

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Ethereum

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Ethereum

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Ethereum
 The EVM specifies an execution model for state changes of the
blockchain.
 Formally, the EVM can be specified by the following tuple:
(block_state, transaction, message, code, memory, stack, pc, gas)
 32 byte instruction word size
 The block_state represents the global state of the whole blockchain
including all accounts, contracts and storage

Course : Architecture and Technology of Blockchain Classe : Master1 ISIDS 12

Ethereum
 A transaction is a signed data package that is always sent by a wallet
and contains the following data field :
• Nonce : The transaction number for this account, starting with 0.
• To : The address of the recipient of the message
• Value : The amount of wei (ether) to transfer from the sender to the recipient
• Gas Price : The price in wei that this transaction will pay for Gas
• Gas Limit : The maximum amount of gas that this transaction can consume.
• Data : Data that the code in the EVM processes
• Signature (v r, s) : A signature identifying the sender
 There are two types of transactions: From wallet to wallet and from
wallet to smart contract

Course : Architecture and Technology of Blockchain Classe : Master1 ISIDS 13

Ethereum
 A message is very similar to a transaction. Messages are only sent by
contracts and exist only virtually, i.e. they are not mined into a block
like transactions. It contains :
• The sender of the message (implicit)
• The recipient of the message
• The amount of ether to transfer alongside the message
• An optional data field
• A Gas limit value
 Whenever a contract calls a method on another contract, a virtual
message is sent. Whenever a wallet calls a method on a contract, a
transactionis sent.

Course : Architecture and Technology of Blockchain Classe : Master1 ISIDS 14

Ethereum : EVM

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Ethereum : EVM
 The EVM makes the code portable across different machines.
 The EVM is a stack-based processor.
 The EVM has 140 opcodes which allow it to be Turing
complete.
 Each opcode takes 1 byte of storage space.
 The size of the stack or stack depth is 1024 items, and each item
is 256 bit word with a total of 16 slots.
 It also has a contract memory (non-persistent) for complicated
operations.
 Reading from storage is free, but writing to storage is
extremely expensive.

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Ethereum : EVM
 Code : The code basically represents a smart contract as bytecode.
For the EVM, a smart contract is a sequence of opcodes similar to
assembly code.
 Example :
PUSH1 0x60
PUSH1 0x40
MSTORE
PUSH1 0x04
CALLDATASIZE
LT
PUSH2 0x00b6
JUMPI
PUSH4 0xffffffff

 Memory : An infinitely expandable byte array that is non-persistent

and used as temporal storage during execution.

Course : Architecture and Technology of Blockchain Classe : Master1 ISIDS 17

Ethereum : EVM
 The stack is also used as a fast, non-persistent buffer to
which 32 byte (256 bit) values can be pushed and popped
during execution.

 The program counter PC is always initialized with 0 and

points to the position of the current opcode instruction.

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Ethereum : Gas

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Ethereum : Gas
 Every executed opcode instruction uses a miner’s computational
resources and therefore costs a certain fee (called gas).
 Each opcode uses a certain amount of gas which may depend on the
arguments of the operation, e.g., number of bytes to be allocated.
 At the beginning of a transaction the sender must specify a
maximum amount of gas that he is willing to pay for the transaction
to be executed.
 The sender can set an arbitrary amount of Ether he is willing to pay
for each instruction called gas price.
 The final costs for each transaction are used gas * gas price.
 If a transaction requires more gas as the maximum specified gas, the
transaction will fail. On the other hand, if it takes less, the sender
only pays the gas that was used.

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Ethereum : Gas

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Ethereum : Gas and Fee

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Ethereum : Account types
 Ethereum supports two types of accounts identified by 32-byte address :
Externally Owned Account (EOA) and Smart Contract Account

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Ethereum : Account types
 Externally Owned Account
• Owned by some external entity (person, corporation, etc.)
• Accounts that are controlled by a ECDSA private key do not have any code stored
on the blockchain.
• Can be seen as the default wallet of a user.
• It can sign transactions, issue smart contract functions calls and send Ether from
one account to another.
• The origin of any transaction is always an account controlled and signed by the
private key.
 Smart Contract Account
• Account controlled by the contract code.
• Contracts can send messages to other accounts, both externally and smart
contracts.
• Code execution triggered by transactions or function calls (msg)

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Ethereum : Account types
 On an abstract level, an Ethereum account is a 4-tuple containing the
following data : (nonce, balance, contract_code, storage)
nonce
An increasing number that is attached to any transaction to prevent replay attacks and
double spending.

balance
The current account balance of the account in Ether.

contract_code
The bytecode representation of the account. If no contract code is present, then the
account is externally controlled.

storage
The data storage used by the account and empty by default. Only contract accounts can
have their own storage.

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Ethereum : Account types

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