Ethereum Smart Contract Development

EVM

EVM is a stack-based interpreter, which has a memory byte array and key-value storage. To visualize a stack, let us return to our brunch buffet analogy and think about how the clean plates are kept one above another.

Figure 2.10 illustrates such a stack as a last-in-first-out (LIFO) process with its crucial operations like pop and push:

Figure 2.10: Stack operation in nutshell

Elements on the EVM stack are 32 bytes long and all key-value storage are also 32 bytes. Smart contracts, which are coded in high-level languages, run on blockchain through EVM, which generates machine level operational codes (opcodes) during runtime. These opcodes ...