Ethereum and smart contract-enabled blockchain

Abstract

This chapter presents the Ethereum blockchain. First, we discuss the aspects that characterize Ethereum as a blockchain, like its network, transactions, blocks, and consensus mechanism. This is done mainly by drawing a comparison with Bitcoin. Then, we discuss more in depth the aspects of Ethereum that distinguishes it from Bitcoin, that is, smart contracts. We discuss how smart contracts are integrated into the other blockchain features of Ethereum. We provide examples of real smart contracts and discuss the Ethereum tokens as a specific class of smart contracts particularly popular in real-world applications. Finally, we briefly discuss how Ethereum smart contracts enable the development of distributed applications (DApps). The case study presents Everledger, a company specializing on using Ethereum to provide safe and reliable asset provenance information management in markets where information transparency is a major requirement.