Mastering Blockchain - Second Edition

The account state

The account state consists of four fields: nonce, balance, storage root and code hash and is described in detail here:

• Nonce: This is a value that is incremented every time a transaction is sent from the address. In case of contract accounts, it represents the number of contracts created by the account. Contract accounts are one of the two types of accounts that exist in Ethereum; they will be explained later on in the chapter in more detail.
• Balance: This value represents the number of Weis which is the smallest unit of the currency (Ether) in Ethereum held by the address.
• Storage root: This field represents the root node of a Merkle Patricia tree that encodes the storage contents of the account.
• Code hash: This is an ...