Mastering Blockchain - Second Edition

Types of accounts

Two kinds of accounts exist in Ethereum:

• Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs)
• Contract Accounts (CAs)

The first type is EOAs, and the other is CAs. EOAs are similar to accounts that are controlled by a private key in Bitcoin. CAs are the accounts that have code associated with them along with the private key.

Various properties of each type of accounts are described here:

EOs:

• EOAs has ether balance
• They are capable of sending transactions
• They have no associated code
• They are controlled by private keys
• Accounts contain a key-value store
• They are associated with a human user

CAs:

• CAs have Ether balance.
• They have associated code that is kept in memory/storage on the blockchain.
• They can get triggered and execute code in ...