Evaluation of a blockchain platform: Ethereum
This project is an evaluation of Ethereum in general terms. It consists of a report describing blockchain and in particular Ethereum, as well as its most prominent applications. It also contains a hands-on demonstration of a functional voting decentralized application over Ethereum.
About
Author
Marcel Cases i Freixenet <marcel.cases@estudiantat.upc.edu>
Course
Decentralised Systems (DS-MIRI)
FIB - Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. BarcelonaTech
Spring 2021
Abstract
Blockchain is one of the most disruptive technologies nowadays. It is a distributed and secured network that allows deploying pieces of code known as smart contracts over it, and execute them when certain conditions are met. Ethereum is one of the main blockchain platforms that supports smart contracts. When users want to send information, a transaction is made. A transaction can contain currency or code, and is verified by miners. Miners are users that verify that transactions are valid by solving computationally-consuming problems. All this architecture allows the creation of decentralized applications, or DApps, which are services that run on the blockchain. These applications have many and diverse goals, like allowing users to vote, keeping digital identities safe, sharing medical records by protecting anonymity, or powering a crowdfunding campaign. An experiment is made by developing and deploying a smart contract that emulates voting on a referendum.