ETHEREUM
ARCHITECTURE.
A deep technical exploration of Ethereum’s network design, execution model, gas economics, and state management.
Objective
Deconstruct the Ethereum stack: understanding how nodes maintain global state via peer-to-peer communication, the deterministic nature of the EVM, and how gas fees regulate computational resources.
The Network Layer
Ethereum operates as a peer-to-peer network of nodes. Unlike client-server architectures, every full node stores the complete history and state of the blockchain.
- Execution Clients (Geth, Nethermind)
- Consensus Clients (Prysm, Lighthouse)
- P2P Communication (devp2p)
Block Propagation & State Sync
Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)
The EVM is a quasi-Turing-complete state machine. It is stack-based, meaning it operates on a Last-In-First-Out basis with a word size of 256 bits to facilitate native hashing and elliptic curve operations.
Stack Architecture
256-bit word size. 1024 item depth limit. Strictly deterministic.
Isolated Sandbox
Code runs with no access to network, filesystem, or other processes.
Global State
A large data structure (Merkle Patricia Trie) holding all accounts.
Bytecode Execution
High-level Solidity compiles down to low-level Opcodes.
Gas & Economics
Gas is the unit that measures the amount of computational effort required to execute operations. It serves two purposes: preventing infinite loops (Halting Problem) and prioritizing market resources.
Total Fee = (Base Fee + Priority Fee) × Gas Used
System Check
State relies on Account Model, not UTXO
EVM guarantees deterministic execution
Gas aligns computation with cost