In this article, you're about to unravel the fundamentals of Ethereum.

Ever wondered what is Ethereum? what is Ether? how does Ethereum work?

Alright, I am here to comprehend a gentle introduction to ethereum. Sound good? Let’s get to it.

What is Ethereum?

Can you imagine a group of computers connected together over the internet? Well, these computers have to run some software that will be connecting them with each other. Likewise ethereum at its core is a software called an Ethereum Client. Anyone can download this Ethereum Client software and run it from their computer. The Ethereum Client will connect over internet to other peoples computers running similar software.

Does Ethereum have a blockchain?

Ethereum is a blockchain based platform. It has its own blockchain which contains blocks of data [transactions and smart contracts]. This blocks are created and mined by the participants running the Ethereum Client software and distributed to other participants who validate them.

Blocks are chained by referring to the hash of the previous blocks. These Ethereum blocks are created and added to its blockchain every 15 seconds. There are around 70 basic transactions in a block. Ethereum blocks are under 80KB in size. The data in the blocks, once written, are immutable.

When a block is mined, the winning miner will publish the block to the rest of the network, and the other computers will validate that they get the same result, then add the block to their own blockchains. This is how the world state of Ethereum’s blockchain gets updated.

The World State in Ethereum: The world state, is a mapping between addresses (160-bit identifiers) and account states(value). Though not stored on the blockchain, it is assumed that the implementation maintains this mapping. Ethereum does not store its state in the blockchain.

What can the Ethereum Client do?

The ethereum Client software will connect to other people's computer running similar client software and start downloading the Ethereum Blockchain from them to catch up to the current world state. It will also independently validate that each block conforms to the Ethereum rules. Like Bitcoin, Ethereum validates, stores and replicates blockchain data on many computers around the world. Ethereum takes this one step further, and also runs small computer code equivalently on many computers around the world. The small computer programs being run are called smart contracts, and the contracts are run by participants[ Ethereum Client] on their machines using a sort of operating system called a “Ethereum Virtual Machine”. These smart contracts are fully functional and can perform ay computation that you can do in any programming language. The Client can also create and mine Ethereum blocks.

Ethereum's Cryptocurrency

Odds are, you have heard about the Ether. Ether is the transactional token that facilitates operations on the Ethereum network. Users may exchange other cryptocurrencies and sovereign currencies for ether tokens, but ether tokens cannot be substituted with other cryptocurrencies to provide computing power for Ethereum transactions. Each mined block creates some Ether tokens.

THE END

I hope now you will be having a gentle understanding of the Ethereum Blockchain. I will be writing in more detail on specific topics and blockchain development in the upcoming articles.

You can comment down below if I have any slipups in my article.

Really, I read all of comments ;)