Ethereum Introduction Prof. Tom Austin San Jos State University - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Ethereum Introduction Prof. Tom Austin San Jos State University - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Sep 21, 2023 306 likes •449 views

Cryptocurrencies & Security on the Blockchain Ethereum Introduction Prof. Tom Austin San Jos State University Some Brief Ethereum Facts Number 2 cryptocurrency by market cap. Not why we are studying it Core developers

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SLIDE 1

Cryptocurrencies & Security on the Blockchain

  • Prof. Tom Austin

San José State University

Ethereum Introduction

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SLIDE 2

Some Brief Ethereum Facts

  • Number 2 cryptocurrency

by market cap.

–Not why we are studying it

  • Core developers

–Vitalik Buterin (creator) –Gavin Wood

  • Block 0 mined July 30, 2015
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SLIDE 3

Ethereum Prehistory: Mastercoin

  • Protocol layer on top of Bitcoin
  • Focused on financial contracts

– Two-party contracts with enforced terms

  • October 2013: Vitalik suggested a more

flexible scripting language

– More limited vision – Not Turing-complete

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SLIDE 4

December 2013: Ethereum Proposal

  • The name "Ethereum" first appears in print
  • Transaction fees for different actions included

– Computational steps paid for in ether (this concept changed later) – Once fees exhausted, processing stops

  • Contracts became accounts in their own right
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SLIDE 5

More History

  • Gavin Wood joins project

– Designs the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). – Writes "The Yellow Paper" in 2014.

  • Gas model changes

– Miners explicitly vote on gas price. – Previous approaches allowed them to implicitly do this anyway.

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SLIDE 6

Account Types

  • Externally owned accounts (EOAs)

– Equivalent to accounts in Bitcoin – Have a private key

  • Contract accounts

– Have contract code – No private key

  • Cannot initiate transactions

– Can react to transactions and call other contracts – Contain data

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SLIDE 7

Common Features with Bitcoin

  • Digital currency

– Called ether (ETH)

  • Not "ethereum"

– Smallest unit: wei

  • Proof-of-work blockchain

– Ethash – designed to be ASIC-resistant – Much quicker: 14-15 second block time – Plans to move to proof-of-stake (Casper)

  • Peer-to-peer network
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SLIDE 8

Differences from Bitcoin

  • Turing-complete virtual machine

– Almost… – Brings up a lot of security issues

  • Gas

– Prevents denial-of-service attacks – Transactions specify

  • ETH earmarked for gas
  • gas-rate
  • Less conservative development culture

– "Move fast and break things" – More frequent hard-forks – Expect changes

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SLIDE 9

Lab, Part 1 Create Ethereum MetaMask wallet. Details in Canvas.

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SLIDE 10

Decentralized Applications (DApps)

  • Also referred to as dApps, Dapps, and ÐApps

– Ð is the Old-English letter 'Eth'

  • Written in a smart contract language

– Solidity is the most prevalent

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SLIDE 11

Review Test Faucet Contract

(in-class)

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SLIDE 12

Suggested Reading

  • The Beige Paper

– https://github.com/chronaeon/beigepaper/blob/master/beige paper.pdf – Less formal version of the Yellow Paper (https://ethereum.github.io/yellowpaper/paper.pdf)

  • Mastering Ethereum, by Andreas M. Antonopoulos

and Gavin Wood. https://github.com/ethereumbook/ethereumbook

– Many of the examples from today taken from this book

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SLIDE 13

Lab, Part 2 Write your own Faucet contract. Details in Canvas.