ETH: Strengthening smart contract security with ethor
Ethereum is also described as a second-generation blockchain (being Bitcoin-like blockchains, the first-generation), supporting the first-time smart contracts and scripting functionality. Smart contracts allow a world of possibilities, and they can pretty much automate anything, being self-executing computer code that lives in a decentralized blockchain. Once conditions on a smart contract are met, an event (whatever the smart contract was designed for) is triggered, fulfilling the smart contract’s purpose.
In Ethereum, the smart contracts are written in a programming language called Solidity and these programs are run in the EVM — Ethereum Virtual Machine. You can see the EVM as a giant Turing-complete, decentralized virtual machine distributed across all the Ethereum nodes worldwide. In total, there are around 8500 nodes, and pretty much anyone can be a node in the network. The EVM is the core of smart contract execution. Due to its decentralized nature, it’s also highly redundant, high fault-tolerant, and very resistant to attacks such as DDoS stacked and immutable. What’s the catch? The trade-off is that Ethereum may have a bit low throughput, and/or the transaction fees may be high sometimes.