Understanding How Ethereum Works

In the previous chapter, we saw what DApps are. We also saw an overview of some of the popular DApps. One of them was Ethereum. At present, Ethereum is the most popular DApp after bitcoin. In this chapter, we will learn in depth about how Ethereum works and what we can develop using Ethereum. We will also see the important Ethereum clients and node implementations.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Ethereum user accounts
• What are smart contracts and how do they work?
• Ethereum virtual machine
• How does mining work in the proof-of-work consensus protocol?
• Learning how to use the geth command
• Setting up the Ethereum Wallet and Mist
• Overview of Whisper and Swarm
• The future of Ethereum