3

I am a developer for about 10 years now and quite new to the crypto world. I understand the basic concepts for Blockchains and tokens and proof-of-whatever. But what I am missing is:

  1. After finishing the white paper, what happens next?

So Ethereum had this idea, and then what. They coded the blockchain (in which language?) and were did they place it?

Until a network works, a first instance needs to be somewhere, waiting for input.

Afterwards, where is the full chain? I've read a few projects where they say "We sync instead of downloading the whole chain to make it faster to use." Where do they sync it from? How do you speak to one or many chains?

The idea is that every member of the network downloads the chain, and then sends a transaction. Where do I send it to? I mean physically, not devloper talk like (to the nodes in the network).

What I don't get is: When do I have the chain on my phone or computer? When I create a wallet? What if I just create paper wallets. Who makes sure there are enough fully downloaded and working chains available? Miners?

ohboy21
  • 131
  • 2
  • The actual data of the blockchain exists on the P2P layer. Every participant ("node", full or light) shares data with each other, not just miners. – libertylocked Nov 18 '17 at 08:36
  • I doubt you are a developer with 10 years experience. A developer with 10 years of experience downloads the source code and looks in to it. He only asks specific questions. Your questions are of a newbie that is studying software engineering. Please, don't lie to us. Any help to you will be useless until you read all the docs for about 1 year, starting from "how to use Linux" – Nulik Nov 19 '17 at 16:03

1 Answers1

2

It depends a little bit of what you want to do with ethereum. If you want to get started with ethereum you have to install different tools.

  1. Install geth. geth is the the command line interface for running a full ethereum node implemented in Go. https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/geth If you you start geth the first time it will download the complete blockchain to your local computer. Wit geth you can create new accounts and send transactions and much more. You should have at least 30 GB of free disk space.

  2. If you want to get started with programming of dapps you should install truffle http://truffleframework.com/ Truffle is a framework for developing smart contracts. If you want to use your smart contracts in a web application you need web3.js https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/JavaScript-API web3.js is a javascript library which you can use to interact with your smart contracts.

Now to your questions

So Ethereum had this idea, and then what. They coded the blockchain (in which language?) and were did they place it?

The ethereum blockchain protocol is implemented in different languages. The most common version is go-ethereum which is written in go. You can download it from here https://geth.ethereum.org/downloads/

Afterwards, where is the full chain? I've read a few projects where they say "We sync instead of downloading the whole chain to make it faster to use." Where do they sync it from? How do you speak to one or many chains?

The full chain is basically on each full node.

What I don't get is: When do I have the chain on my phone or computer? When I create a wallet? What if I just create paper wallets. Who makes sure there are enough fully downloaded and working chains available? Miners?

When you start geth for the first time it will start to download the full chain to your local computer. This can take a long time. If you only want to create an account and a wallet you don't need the full chain on your computer. You can create a wallet at https://www.myetherwallet.com/

Bumblebee
  • 1,751
  • 3
  • 14
  • 23