When the Bitcoin blockchain was launched and deployed for real use cases, it quickly became apparent that its transaction throughput and technical characteristics were insufficient for maintaining a wide range of applications tailored for specific industries involving large amounts of data. That is why one Vitalik Buterin came up with his own blockchain that he called Ethereum to solve the aforementioned issues. However, though having become the most popular blockchain of all, Ethereum still does have its own issues that are slowly being overcome.
At its core, a blockchain is like a transactional machine where there is a certain single instance, which is the only correct one for a transaction to be processed, and which is protected through cryptography. Its state is always immutable and available to everyone on the network. In fact, with each transaction execution, this virtual machine goes from one state to another.
The machine relies on a script language, which is the blockchain. But there are no full loops in the script, and there is no way to perform all the operations that one would like to do for applications. The script only understands the output, but it does not know about the blockchain balance, meaning that the script is self-centered and close-ended.
The Accounts
Unlike the Bitcoin blockchain, the Ethereum blockchain is built on a variety of accounts, and each of which is a peculiarity in itself, essentially being an address. There are two types of accounts, and each of them has an address. The account is owned by someone outside the blockchain and they can dispose of everything related to this account.
A contract account inside the state blockchain stores 4 entities. The nonce is the number of transactions initiated by this account in addition to the balance, and the hash from the code that is linked to this account. The hash is an empty field if it is not a contract account. Finally, each account has its own storage for data. The contract account this is what the Ethereum blockchain was created for and it is controlled only by the code inside the account.
The EVM
The code cannot be changed, unlike the contract account, which can be destroyed. Any error in the code becomes available to everyone on the network and the source of the code, meaning anyone who can work with the blockchain can see it. Such errors cannot be fixed. There is also storage that is linked to the account and that storage is virtually unlimited. With a sufficient amount of money, users can store an infinite amount of data on the Ethereum blockchain.
If there is a code, it must work somewhere. This is where the Ethereum Virtual Machine comes into play. The main thing to remember is that the code that runs inside the EVM is the smart contract code itself, it runs on all machines that are connected to the blockchain.
But a logical question arises in retrospect — if there is a code in which there are loopholes and it can run on all blockchain machines, then how can one break the blockchain?
In principle, it is impossible to determine how long a process will continue and when it will end until the moment it happens. If an infinite loop is executed, all the machines that are in the blockchain are suddenly forced to perform this operation infinitely.
The Gas Fees
This is where an entity known as gas comes in. Gas is every operation that the EVM performs, since it costs a certain amount of gas. The base principle of the Ethereum blockchain foresees revisions for the amount of gas to be paid for each transaction. When users perform any operation, it will cost a certain amount of gas. When they launch any operation on the blockchain, the users define the limit that they can spend as much as possible in a smart contract, a limit known as a gas limit. It is also determined by an auto transaction known as the gas price.
As a result, the maximum amount of money that users can pay as a commission for executing a transaction is found by multiplying the gas limit by the gas price, resulting in the maximum indicator of how much a transaction can cost.
For example, when a user launches a transaction, they set a gas limit of 50,000 on it, and for starting any transaction, there is a price of 21,000 gas, that is, it is immediately deducted from that 50,000. The next operation is longer, for example, it costs 1,000 gas, the next 2,000, as a result, 27,000 gas remains from the limit.
This cost will not be charged from the users if the user turns it off at the beginning when they start a transaction. The 50,000 gas price that they set will be immediately deducted from their account. At the end of the operation, when it becomes clear how much gas was charged in effect, the remainder of the gas will be returned to the user.
There are situations in which users set 23,000 as a limit and they ran out of gas in the process of execution. The operation in this case will be canceled completely, except for the original transaction. That is, the very interaction with the smart contract will remain in the blockchain, but all operations that should have been performed within the smart contract will be canceled.
There is no contact that some other user can own outside the blockchain. The contracts can interact with each other. If a user starts a transaction on the first contract, and it, in turn, runs the code that runs on another contract, then the cycle will continue. In total, these internal launches of other contracts can last to up to 1024 in a cycle. Also, the interaction can not necessarily go along the chain, it can be launched on the processes of other smart contracts in parallel across chains.
It is important to understand that a transaction is a millet transfer of value from one address to another. On the Ethereum blockchain, a transaction is a message to a smart contract. Its main task on the Ethereum blockchain is the payment of the cost of work of a smart contract that works inside the blockchain. As a result, the contract is an application that has a code storing some data that users can save and retrieve, and which can be interacted with using transactions through the API provided by the underlying smart contract.
Conclusion
The Ethereum network was designed for launching and executing smart contracts that are address-specific and have a certain purpose. Once executed, these smart contracts cease to exist, but their transaction history and data is recorded on the blockchain and users pay gas to have these operations executed.
P.S.
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