Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)

The Ethereum Virtual Machine is the component on the Ethereum platform that handles the deployment and execution of the smart contract. The EVM is a quasi-Turing complete state machine as all transactions on the EVM involve limit commands and change of the state values due to the gas limit given to the contract execution. EVM has a stack-based architecture, involving ROM, memory and account storage. They are used to store the state values as well as the contract program bytecode. EVM executes its own bytecode instruction set, which can be compiled from a higher level smart contract languages such as Solidity and Serpent [8].

When a transaction involving state changes from contract functions, an EVM will be instantiated to load the program bytecode and execute the function and states will be updated upon successful execution of the transaction.