Ethereum starter kit
Ethereum was proposed by Vitalik Buterin after Bitcoin was invented to handle monetary transactions in a peer-to-peer manner. With Ethereum, he envisioned that this innovative technology would solve more advanced problems.
Peer-to-peer communication vs. client-server communication
The core component of Ethereum is the smart contract, which is a piece of code that lives in the network. A smart contract looks pretty much like any ordinary code, for instance, the setOwner() method below sets the owner of a property held by the contract.
pragma solidity ^0.5.12;/*** @title Property* @dev sets the owner of the property*/contract Property {string name = "Awesome Property";address owner;/*** @dev Sets the owner of this contract property*/function setOwner() public {owner = msg.sender;}}
Do you need to run a full Ethereum node on your machine to start developing Ethereum apps?
Not really! You only need three things:
- An Ethereum wallet such as MetaMask.
- Access to an Ethereum test network such as Rinkeby.
- Programmatic access to that test network such as the web3.js library.