Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum and co-founder of the Ethereum Foundation, envisioned Ethereum as a decentralized computing platform that enables anyone to create, store, and run smart contract-based Decentralized Applications, or DApps.
As the following diagram shows, an Ethereum blockchain network is a decentralized Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network of Ethereum clients, representing network nodes. An Ethereum client refers to any node that can verify the new transaction, execute the smart contract, and process new blocks of the chain. It is a kind of enclave, residing in thousands of computers or devices on the internet, and connected through the Ethereum P2P network. What is enclaved is the EVM and the runtime environment in the P2P network for smart contract execution. The following diagram shows the P2PÂ network:
Ethereum clients run...
