ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER

ISTANBUL VERSION 56ebee0 – 2021-06-15

DR. GAVIN WOOD

FOUNDER, ETHEREUM & PARITY
[email protected]

Abstract. The blockchain paradigm when coupled with cryptographically-secured transactions has demonstrated its
utility through a number of projects, with Bitcoin being one of the most notable ones. Each such project can be seen as
a simple application on a decentralised, but singleton, compute resource. We can call this paradigm a transactional
singleton machine with shared-state.
Ethereum implements this paradigm in a generalised manner. Furthermore it provides a plurality of such resources,
each with a distinct state and operating code but able to interact through a message-passing framework with others.
We discuss its design, implementation issues, the opportunities it provides and the future hurdles we envisage.

1. Introduction is often lacking, and plain old prejudices are difficult to

shake.
With ubiquitous internet connections in most places
Overall, we wish to provide a system such that users
of the world, global information transmission has become
can be guaranteed that no matter with which other indi-
incredibly cheap. Technology-rooted movements like Bit-
viduals, systems or organisations they interact, they can
coin have demonstrated through the power of the default,
do so with absolute confidence in the possible outcomes
consensus mechanisms, and voluntary respect of the social
and how those outcomes might come about.
contract, that it is possible to use the internet to make
a decentralised value-transfer system that can be shared
1.2. Previous Work. Buterin [2013a] first proposed the
across the world and virtually free to use. This system can
kernel of this work in late November, 2013. Though now
be said to be a very specialised version of a cryptographi-
evolved in many ways, the key functionality of a block-
cally secure, transaction-based state machine. Follow-up
chain with a Turing-complete language and an effectively
systems such as Namecoin adapted this original “currency
unlimited inter-transaction storage capability remains un-
application” of the technology into other applications albeit
changed.
rather simplistic ones.
Dwork and Naor [1992] provided the first work into the
Ethereum is a project which attempts to build the gen-
usage of a cryptographic proof of computational expendi-
eralised technology; technology on which all transaction-
ture (“proof-of-work”) as a means of transmitting a value
based state machine concepts may be built. Moreover it
signal over the Internet. The value-signal was utilised here
aims to provide to the end-developer a tightly integrated
as a spam deterrence mechanism rather than any kind
end-to-end system for building software on a hitherto un-
of currency, but critically demonstrated the potential for
explored compute paradigm in the mainstream: a trustful
a basic data channel to carry a strong economic signal,
object messaging compute framework.
allowing a receiver to make a physical assertion without
having to rely upon trust. Back [2002] later produced a
system in a similar vein.
1.1. Driving Factors. There are many goals of this The first example of utilising the proof-of-work as a
project; one key goal is to facilitate transactions between strong economic signal to secure a currency was by Vish-
consenting individuals who would otherwise have no means numurthy et al. [2003]. In this instance, the token was
to trust one another. This may be due to geographical used to keep peer-to-peer file trading in check, providing
separation, interfacing difficulty, or perhaps the incompati- “consumers” with the ability to make micro-payments to
bility, incompetence, unwillingness, expense, uncertainty, “suppliers” for their services. The security model afforded
inconvenience, or corruption of existing legal systems. By by the proof-of-work was augmented with digital signatures
specifying a state-change system through a rich and unam- and a ledger in order to ensure that the historical record
biguous language, and furthermore architecting a system couldn’t be corrupted and that malicious actors could not
such that we can reasonably expect that an agreement will spoof payment or unjustly complain about service deliv-
be thus enforced autonomously, we can provide a means ery. Five years later, Nakamoto [2008] introduced another
to this end. such proof-of-work-secured value token, somewhat wider in
Dealings in this proposed system would have several scope. The fruits of this project, Bitcoin, became the first
attributes not often found in the real world. The incorrupt- widely adopted global decentralised transaction ledger.
ibility of judgement, often difficult to find, comes naturally Other projects built on Bitcoin’s success; the alt-coins
from a disinterested algorithmic interpreter. Transparency, introduced numerous other currencies through alteration
or being able to see exactly how a state or judgement came to the protocol. Some of the best known are Litecoin and
about through the transaction log and rules or instructional Primecoin, discussed by Sprankel [2013]. Other projects
codes, never happens perfectly in human-based systems sought to take the core value content mechanism of the pro-
since natural language is necessarily vague, information tocol and repurpose it; Aron [2012] discusses, for example,
1
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 2

the Namecoin project which aims to provide a decentralised itself—that would be far too big). They also punctuate the
name-resolution system. transaction series with incentives for nodes to mine. This
Other projects still aim to build upon the Bitcoin net- incentivisation takes place as a state-transition function,
work itself, leveraging the large amount of value placed in adding value to a nominated account.
the system and the vast amount of computation that goes Mining is the process of dedicating effort (working) to
into the consensus mechanism. The Mastercoin project, bolster one series of transactions (a block) over any other
first proposed by Willett [2013], aims to build a richer potential competitor block. It is achieved thanks to a
protocol involving many additional high-level features on cryptographically secure proof. This scheme is known as a
top of the Bitcoin protocol through utilisation of a number proof-of-work and is discussed in detail in section 11.5.
of auxiliary parts to the core protocol. The Coloured Coins Formally, we expand to:
project, proposed by Rosenfeld et al. [2012], takes a similar (2) σ t+1 ≡ Π(σ t , B)
but more simplified strategy, embellishing the rules of a
transaction in order to break the fungibility of Bitcoin’s (3) B ≡ (..., (T0 , T1 , ...), ...)
base currency and allow the creation and tracking of tokens (4) Π(σ, B) ≡ Ω(B, Υ(Υ(σ, T0 ), T1 )...)
through a special “chroma-wallet”-protocol-aware piece of Where Ω is the block-finalisation state transition func-
software. tion (a function that rewards a nominated party); B is this
Additional work has been done in the area with discard- block, which includes a series of transactions amongst some
ing the decentralisation foundation; Ripple, discussed by other components; and Π is the block-level state-transition
Boutellier and Heinzen [2014], has sought to create a “fed- function.
erated” system for currency exchange, effectively creating This is the basis of the blockchain paradigm, a model
a new financial clearing system. It has demonstrated that that forms the backbone of not only Ethereum, but all
high efficiency gains can be made if the decentralisation decentralised consensus-based transaction systems to date.
premise is discarded.
Early work on smart contracts has been done by Szabo 2.1. Value. In order to incentivise computation within the
[1997] and Miller [1997]. Around the 1990s it became clear network, there needs to be an agreed method for transmit-
that algorithmic enforcement of agreements could become a ting value. To address this issue, Ethereum has an intrinsic
significant force in human cooperation. Though no specific currency, Ether, known also as ETH and sometimes referred
system was proposed to implement such a system, it was to by the Old English D̄. The smallest subdenomination
proposed that the future of law would be heavily affected of Ether, and thus the one in which all integer values of
by such systems. In this light, Ethereum may be seen as a the currency are counted, is the Wei. One Ether is defined
general implementation of such a crypto-law system. as being 1018 Wei. There exist other subdenominations of
For a list of terms used in this paper, refer to Appen- Ether:
dix A. Multiplier Name
0
10 Wei
2. The Blockchain Paradigm
1012 Szabo
Ethereum, taken as a whole, can be viewed as a 1015 Finney
transaction-based state machine: we begin with a gen- 1018 Ether
esis state and incrementally execute transactions to morph Throughout the present work, any reference to value,
it into some current state. It is this current state which we in the context of Ether, currency, a balance or a payment,
accept as the canonical “version” of the world of Ethereum. should be assumed to be counted in Wei.
The state can include such information as account bal-
ances, reputations, trust arrangements, data pertaining 2.2. Which History? Since the system is decentralised
to information of the physical world; in short, anything and all parties have an opportunity to create a new block
that can currently be represented by a computer is admis- on some older pre-existing block, the resultant structure is
sible. Transactions thus represent a valid arc between two necessarily a tree of blocks. In order to form a consensus
states; the ‘valid’ part is important—there exist far more as to which path, from root (the genesis block) to leaf (the
invalid state changes than valid state changes. Invalid state block containing the most recent transactions) through
changes might, e.g., be things such as reducing an account this tree structure, known as the blockchain, there must
balance without an equal and opposite increase elsewhere. be an agreed-upon scheme. If there is ever a disagreement
A valid state transition is one which comes about through between nodes as to which root-to-leaf path down the block
a transaction. Formally: tree is the ‘best’ blockchain, then a fork occurs.
This would mean that past a given point in time (block),
(1) σ t+1 ≡ Υ(σ t , T )
multiple states of the system may coexist: some nodes be-
where Υ is the Ethereum state transition function. In lieving one block to contain the canonical transactions,
Ethereum, Υ, together with σ are considerably more pow- other nodes believing some other block to be canonical,
erful than any existing comparable system; Υ allows com- potentially containing radically different or incompatible
ponents to carry out arbitrary computation, while σ allows transactions. This is to be avoided at all costs as the un-
components to store arbitrary state between transactions. certainty that would ensue would likely kill all confidence
Transactions are collated into blocks; blocks are chained in the entire system.
together using a cryptographic hash as a means of refer- The scheme we use in order to generate consensus is a
ence. Blocks function as a journal, recording a series of simplified version of the GHOST protocol introduced by
transactions together with the previous block and an iden- Sompolinsky and Zohar [2013]. This process is described
tifier for the final state (though do not store the final state in detail in section 10.
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 3

Sometimes, a path follows a new protocol from a par- µs [0] denotes the first item on the machine’s stack. For
ticular height (block number). This document describes subsequences, ellipses are used to specify the intended
one version of the protocol, namely the Istanbul version range, to include elements at both limits, e.g. µm [0..31]
defined in EIP-1679 by Beregszaszi and Schoedon [2019]. denotes the first 32 items of the machine’s memory.
In order to follow back the history of a path, one must In the case of the global state σ, which is a sequence of
reference multiple versions of this document. accounts, themselves tuples, the square brackets are used
Occasionally actors cannot agree on a protocol change, to reference an individual account.
and a permanent fork occurs. In order to distinguish be- When considering variants of existing values, we follow
tween diverged blockchains, EIP-155 by Buterin [2016b] the rule that within a given scope for definition, if we
introduced the concept of chain ID, which we denote by β. assume that the unmodified ‘input’ value be denoted by
For the Ethereum main network the placeholder  then the modified and utilisable value is
denoted as 0 , and intermediate values would be ∗ , ∗∗
(5) β=1
&c. On very particular occasions, in order to maximise
readability and only if unambiguous in meaning, we may
3. Conventions use alpha-numeric subscripts to denote intermediate values,
especially those of particular note.
We use a number of typographical conventions for the
When considering the use of existing functions, given a
formal notation, some of which are quite particular to the
function f , the function f ∗ denotes a similar, element-wise
present work:
version of the function mapping instead between sequences.
The two sets of highly structured, ‘top-level’, state val-
It is formally defined in section 4.3.
ues, are denoted with bold lowercase Greek letters. They
We define a number of useful functions throughout. One
fall into those of world-state, which are denoted σ (or a
of the more common is `, which evaluates to the last item
variant thereupon) and those of machine-state, µ.
in the given sequence:
Functions operating on highly structured values are
denoted with an upper-case Greek letter, e.g. Υ, the
Ethereum state transition function. (6) `(x) ≡ x[kxk − 1]
For most functions, an uppercase letter is used, e.g. C,
the general cost function. These may be subscripted to 4. Blocks, State and Transactions
denote specialised variants, e.g. CSSTORE , the cost func- Having introduced the basic concepts behind Ethereum,
tion for the SSTORE operation. For specialised and possibly we will discuss the meaning of a transaction, a block and
externally defined functions, we may format as typewriter the state in more detail.
text, e.g. the Keccak-256 hash function (as per version
3 of the winning entry to the SHA-3 contest by Bertoni 4.1. World State. The world state (state), is a map-
et al. [2011], rather than the final SHA-3 specification), is ping between addresses (160-bit identifiers) and account
denoted KEC (and generally referred to as plain Keccak). states (a data structure serialised as RLP, see Appendix B).
Also, KEC512 refers to the Keccak-512 hash function. Though not stored on the blockchain, it is assumed that
Tuples are typically denoted with an upper-case letter, the implementation will maintain this mapping in a modi-
e.g. T , is used to denote an Ethereum transaction. This fied Merkle Patricia tree (trie, see Appendix D). The trie
symbol may, if accordingly defined, be subscripted to refer requires a simple database backend that maintains a map-
to an individual component, e.g. Tn , denotes the nonce ping of byte arrays to byte arrays; we name this underlying
of said transaction. The form of the subscript is used to database the state database. This has a number of benefits;
denote its type; e.g. uppercase subscripts refer to tuples firstly the root node of this structure is cryptographically
with subscriptable components. dependent on all internal data and as such its hash can
Scalars and fixed-size byte sequences (or, synonymously, be used as a secure identity for the entire system state.
arrays) are denoted with a normal lower-case letter, e.g. Secondly, being an immutable data structure, it allows any
n is used in the document to denote a transaction nonce. previous state (whose root hash is known) to be recalled
Those with a particularly special meaning may be Greek, by simply altering the root hash accordingly. Since we
e.g. δ, the number of items required on the stack for a store all such root hashes in the blockchain, we are able to
given operation. trivially revert to old states.
Arbitrary-length sequences are typically denoted as a The account state, σ[a], comprises the following four
bold lower-case letter, e.g. o is used to denote the byte fields:
sequence given as the output data of a message call. For nonce: A scalar value equal to the number of trans-
particularly important values, a bold uppercase letter may actions sent from this address or, in the case
be used. of accounts with associated code, the number of
Throughout, we assume scalars are non-negative inte- contract-creations made by this account. For ac-
gers and thus belong to the set N. The set of all byte count of address a in state σ, this would be for-
sequences is B, formally defined in Appendix B. If such mally denoted σ[a]n .
a set of sequences is restricted to those of a particular balance: A scalar value equal to the number of Wei
length, it is denoted with a subscript, thus the set of all owned by this address. Formally denoted σ[a]b .
byte sequences of length 32 is named B32 and the set of storageRoot: A 256-bit hash of the root node of a
all non-negative integers smaller than 2256 is named N256 . Merkle Patricia tree that encodes the storage con-
This is formally defined in section 4.3. tents of the account (a mapping between 256-bit
Square brackets are used to index into and reference integer values), encoded into the trie as a mapping
individual components or subsequences of sequences, e.g. from the Keccak 256-bit hash of the 256-bit integer
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 4

keys to the RLP-encoded 256-bit integer values. 4.2. The Transaction. A transaction (formally, T ) is a
The hash is formally denoted σ[a]s . single cryptographically-signed instruction constructed by
codeHash: The hash of the EVM code of this an actor externally to the scope of Ethereum. While it is
account—this is the code that gets executed should assumed that the ultimate external actor will be human in
this address receive a message call; it is immutable nature, software tools will be used in its construction and
and thus, unlike all other fields, cannot be changed dissemination1. There are two types of transactions: those
after construction. All such code fragments are which result in message calls and those which result in
contained in the state database under their corre- the creation of new accounts with associated code (known
sponding hashes for later retrieval. This hash is informally as ‘contract creation’). Both types specify a
formally denoted σ[a]c , and thus the code may be number of common fields:
denoted as b, given that KEC(b) = σ[a]c . nonce: A scalar value equal to the number of trans-
Since we typically wish to refer not to the trie’s root actions sent by the sender; formally Tn .
hash but to the underlying set of key/value pairs stored gasPrice: A scalar value equal to the number of
within, we define a convenient equivalence: Wei to be paid per unit of gas for all computation
costs incurred as a result of the execution of this
TRIE L∗I (σ[a]s ) ≡ σ[a]s


(7) transaction; formally Tp .
gasLimit: A scalar value equal to the maximum
The collapse function for the set of key/value pairs in amount of gas that should be used in executing
the trie, L∗I , is defined as the element-wise transformation this transaction. This is paid up-front, before any
of the base function LI , given as: computation is done and may not be increased


later; formally Tg .
(8) LI (k, v) ≡ KEC(k), RLP(v)
to: The 160-bit address of the message call’s recipi-
where: ent or, for a contract creation transaction, ∅, used
here to denote the only member of B0 ; formally
(9) k ∈ B32 ∧ v∈N Tt .
value: A scalar value equal to the number of Wei to
It shall be understood that σ[a]s is not a ‘physical’ be transferred to the message call’s recipient or,
member of the account and does not contribute to its later in the case of contract creation, as an endowment
serialisation. to the newly created account; formally Tv .
If the codeHash field is the
Keccak-256 hash of the v, r, s: Values corresponding to the signature of the
empty string, i.e. σ[a]c = KEC () , then the node represents transaction and used to determine the sender of
a simple account, sometimes referred to as a “non-contract” the transaction; formally Tw , Tr and Ts . This is
account. expanded in Appendix F.
Thus we may define a world-state collapse function LS :
Additionally, a contract creation transaction contains:
(10) LS (σ) ≡ {p(a) : σ[a] 6= ∅} init: An unlimited size byte array specifying the
EVM-code for the account initialisation procedure,
where formally Ti .
init is an EVM-code fragment; it returns the body,



(11) p(a) ≡ KEC(a), RLP (σ[a]n , σ[a]b , σ[a]s , σ[a]c )
a second fragment of code that executes each time the
This function, LS , is used alongside the trie function account receives a message call (either through a trans-
to provide a short identity (hash) of the world state. We action or due to the internal execution of code). init is
assume: executed only once at account creation and gets discarded
immediately thereafter.
(12) ∀a : σ[a] = ∅ ∨ (a ∈ B20 ∧ v(σ[a])) In contrast, a message call transaction contains:
where v is the account validity function: data: An unlimited size byte array specifying the
input data of the message call, formally Td .
(13) v(x) ≡ xn ∈ N256 ∧xb ∈ N256 ∧xs ∈ B32 ∧xc ∈ B32 Appendix F specifies the function, S, which maps trans-
actions to the sender, and happens through the ECDSA of
An account is empty when it has no code, zero nonce
the SECP-256k1 curve, using the hash of the transaction
and zero balance:
(excepting the latter three signature fields) as the datum
(14)
to sign. For the present we simply assert that the sender
EMPTY(σ, a) ≡ σ[a]c = KEC () ∧σ[a]n = 0∧σ[a]b = 0
of a given transaction T can be represented with S(T ).
Even callable precompiled contracts can have an empty
account state. This is because their account states do not (16) (
usually contain the code describing its behavior. (Tn , Tp , Tg , Tt , Tv , Ti , Tw , Tr , Ts ) if Tt = ∅
LT (T ) ≡
An account is dead when its account state is non-existent (Tn , Tp , Tg , Tt , Tv , Td , Tw , Tr , Ts ) otherwise
or empty:
Here, we assume all components are interpreted by the
(15) DEAD(σ, a) ≡ σ[a] = ∅ ∨ EMPTY(σ, a) RLP as integer values, with the exception of the arbitrary
1Notably, such ‘tools’ could ultimately become so causally removed from their human-based initiation—or humans may become so
causally-neutral—that there could be a point at which they rightly be considered autonomous agents. e.g. contracts may offer bounties to
humans for being sent transactions to initiate their execution.
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 5

length byte arrays Ti and Td . extraData: An arbitrary byte array containing data
relevant to this block. This must be 32 bytes or
(17) Tn ∈ N256 ∧ Tv ∈ N256 ∧ Tp ∈ N256 ∧
fewer; formally Hx .
Tg ∈ N256 ∧ Tw ∈ N256 ∧ Tr ∈ N256 ∧
mixHash: A 256-bit hash which, combined with the
Ts ∈ N256 ∧ Td ∈ B ∧ Ti ∈ B
nonce, proves that a sufficient amount of compu-
where tation has been carried out on this block; formally
Hm .
(18) Nn = {P : P ∈ N ∧ P < 2n } nonce: A 64-bit value which, combined with the mix-
The address hash Tt is slightly different: it is either a hash, proves that a sufficient amount of computa-
20-byte address hash or, in the case of being a contract- tion has been carried out on this block; formally
creation transaction (and thus formally equal to ∅), it is Hn .
the RLP empty byte sequence and thus the member of B0 : The other two components in the block are simply a list
( of ommer block headers (of the same format as above),
B20 if Tt 6= ∅ BU and a series of the transactions, BT . Formally, we can
(19) Tt ∈
B0 otherwise refer to a block B:

4.3. The Block. The block in Ethereum is the collec- (20) B ≡ (BH , BT , BU )
tion of relevant pieces of information (known as the block
header ), H, together with information corresponding to 4.3.1. Transaction Receipt. In order to encode information
the comprised transactions, T, and a set of other block about a transaction concerning which it may be useful
headers U that are known to have a parent equal to the to form a zero-knowledge proof, or index and search, we
present block’s parent’s parent (such blocks are known as encode a receipt of each transaction containing certain in-
ommers 2). The block header contains several pieces of formation from its execution. Each receipt, denoted BR [i]
information: for the ith transaction, is placed in an index-keyed trie
parentHash: The Keccak 256-bit hash of the parent and the root recorded in the header as He .
block’s header, in its entirety; formally Hp . The transaction receipt, R, is a tuple of four items
ommersHash: The Keccak 256-bit hash of the om- comprising: the status code of the transaction, Rz , the
mers list portion of this block; formally Ho . cumulative gas used in the block containing the transac-
beneficiary: The 160-bit address to which all fees tion receipt as of immediately after the transaction has
collected from the successful mining of this block happened, Ru , the set of logs created through execution of
be transferred; formally Hc . the transaction, Rl and the Bloom filter composed from
stateRoot: The Keccak 256-bit hash of the root information in those logs, Rb :
node of the state trie, after all transactions are
executed and finalisations applied; formally Hr . (21) R ≡ (Rz , Ru , Rb , Rl )
transactionsRoot: The Keccak 256-bit hash of the We assert that the status code Rz is a non-negative
root node of the trie structure populated with each integer:
transaction in the transactions list portion of the
block; formally Ht . (22) Rz ∈ N
receiptsRoot: The Keccak 256-bit hash of the root
node of the trie structure populated with the re- We assert that Ru , the cumulative gas used, is a non-
ceipts of each transaction in the transactions list negative integer and that the logs Bloom, Rb , is a hash of
portion of the block; formally He . size 2048 bits (256 bytes):
logsBloom: The Bloom filter composed from index-
able information (logger address and log topics) (23) Ru ∈ N ∧ Rb ∈ B256
contained in each log entry from the receipt of The sequence Rl is a series of log entries, (O0 , O1 , ...).
each transaction in the transactions list; formally A log entry, O, is a tuple of the logger’s address, Oa , a
Hb . possibly empty series of 32-byte log topics, Ot and some
difficulty: A scalar value corresponding to the dif- number of bytes of data, Od :
ficulty level of this block. This can be calculated
from the previous block’s difficulty level and the (24) O ≡ (Oa , (Ot0 , Ot1 , ...), Od )
timestamp; formally Hd .
number: A scalar value equal to the number of an-
(25) Oa ∈ B20 ∧ ∀x ∈ Ot : x ∈ B32 ∧ Od ∈ B
cestor blocks. The genesis block has a number of
zero; formally Hi . We define the Bloom filter function, M , to reduce a log
gasLimit: A scalar value equal to the current limit entry into a single 256-byte hash:
of gas expenditure per block; formally Hl . _
gasUsed: A scalar value equal to the total gas used


(26) M (O) ≡ x∈{Oa }∪Ot M3:2048 (x)
in transactions in this block; formally Hg .
timestamp: A scalar value equal to the reasonable where M3:2048 is a specialised Bloom filter that sets
output of Unix’s time() at this block’s inception; three bits out of 2048, given an arbitrary byte sequence.
formally Hs . It does this through taking the low-order 11 bits of each of
2ommer is a gender-neutral term to mean “sibling of parent”; see https://nonbinary.miraheze.org/wiki/Gender_neutral_language_in_
English#Aunt/Uncle
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 6

the first three pairs of bytes in a Keccak-256 hash of the where

byte sequence.3 Formally: (38) Bn = {B : B ∈ B ∧ kBk = n}
(27)M3:2048 (x : x ∈ B) ≡ y : y ∈ B256 where: We now have a rigorous specification for the construc-
(28) y = (0, 0, ..., 0) except: tion of a formal block structure. The RLP function RLP
(29) ∀i ∈ {0, 2, 4} : Bm(x,i) (y) = 1 (see Appendix B) provides the canonical method for trans-
(30) m(x, i) ≡ KEC(x)[i, i + 1] mod 2048 forming this structure into a sequence of bytes ready for
transmission over the wire or storage locally.
where B is the bit reference function such that Bj (x)
equals the bit of index j (indexed from 0) in the byte array 4.3.4. Block Header Validity. We define P (BH ) to be the
x. parent block of B, formally:
(39) P (H) ≡ B 0 : KEC(RLP(BH
0
)) = Hp
4.3.2. Holistic Validity. We can assert a block’s validity
if and only if it satisfies several conditions: it must be in- The block number is the parent’s block number incre-
ternally consistent with the ommer and transaction block mented by one:
hashes and the given transactions BT (as specified in sec (40) Hi ≡ P (H)H i + 1
11), when executed in order on the base state σ (derived
from the final state of the parent block), result in a new The canonical difficulty of a block of header H is defined
state of the identity Hr : as D(H):
(41)
(31) Hr ≡ TRIE(LS (Π(σ, B))) ∧
(
D0 if Hi = 0
Ho ≡ KEC(RLP(L∗H (BU ))) ∧ D(H) ≡

max D0 , P (H)H d + x × ς2 +  otherwise
Ht ≡ TRIE({∀i < kBT k, i ∈ N :
p(i, LT (BT [i]))}) ∧ where:
He ≡ TRIE({∀i < kBR k, i ∈ N :
(42) D0 ≡ 131072
W p(i, BR
[i])}) ∧
Hb ≡ r∈BR rb
 
P (H)H d
(43) x≡
where p(k, v) is simply the pairwise RLP transformation, 2048
in this case, the first being the index of the transaction in
Hs − P (H)H s
   
the block and the second being the transaction receipt: (44) ς2 ≡ max y − , −99

9
(32) p(k, v) ≡ RLP(k), RLP(v) (
1 if kP (H)U k = 0
Furthermore: y≡
2 otherwise
(33) TRIE(LS (σ)) = P (BH )H r
0
j k
Thus TRIE(LS (σ)) is the root node hash of the Merkle (45)  ≡ 2bHi ÷100000c−2
Patricia tree structure containing the key-value pairs of (46) Hi0 ≡ max(Hi − κ, 0)
the state σ with values encoded using RLP, and P (BH ) is 
the parent block of B, defined directly. 3000000 if 4370000 6 Hi < 7280000

The values stemming from the computation of transac- (47) κ ≡ 5000000 if 7280000 6 Hi < 9200000
tions, specifically the transaction receipts, BR , and that

9000000 if Hi > 9200000

defined through the transaction’s state-accumulation func-
tion, Π, are formalised later in section 11.4. Note that D0 is the difficulty of the genesis block. The
Homestead difficulty parameter, ς2 , is used to affect a dy-
4.3.3. Serialisation. The function LB and LH are the namic homeostasis of time between blocks, as the time
preparation functions for a block and block header re- between blocks varies, as discussed below, as implemented
spectively. We assert the types and order of the structure in EIP-2 by Buterin [2015]. In the Homestead release,
for when the RLP transformation is required: the exponential difficulty symbol,  causes the difficulty to
slowly increase (every 100,000 blocks) at an exponential
(34) LH (H) ≡ ( Hp , H o , H c , H r , H t , H e , H b , H d ,
rate, and thus increasing the block time difference, and
Hi , H l , H g , H s , H x , H m , H n )
putting time pressure on transitioning to proof-of-stake.
LH (BH ), L∗T (BT ), L∗H (BU )


(35) LB (B) ≡ This effect, known as the “difficulty bomb”, or “ice age”,
With L∗T and L∗H being element-wise sequence transfor- was explained in EIP-649 by Schoedon and Buterin [2017]
mations, thus: and delayed and implemented earlier in EIP-2. ς2 was also
(36) modified in EIP-100 with the use of x, the adjustment
f ∗ (x0 , x1 , ...) ≡ f (x0 ), f (x1 ), ... for any function f factor above, and the denominator 9, in order to target



the mean block time including uncle blocks by Buterin
The component types are defined thus: [2016a]. In the Byzantium release, with EIP-649, the ice
(37) Hp ∈ B32 ∧ Ho ∈ B32 ∧ Hc ∈ B20 ∧ age was delayed by creating a fake block number, Hi0 , which
Hr ∈ B32 ∧ Ht ∈ B32 ∧ He ∈ B32 ∧ is obtained by subtracting three million from the actual
Hb ∈ B256 ∧ Hd ∈ N ∧ Hi ∈ N ∧ block number, which in other words reduced  and the
Hl ∈ N ∧ Hg ∈ N ∧ Hs ∈ N256 ∧ time difference between blocks, in order to allow more time
Hx ∈ B ∧ Hm ∈ B32 ∧ Hn ∈ B8 to develop proof-of-stake and preventing the network from
311 bits = 22048 , and the low-order 11 bits is the modulo 2048 of the operand, which is in this case is “each of the first three pairs of
bytes in a Keccak-256 hash of the byte sequence.”
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 7

“freezing” up. Subsequently, with EIP-1234 by Schoedon Noting additionally that extraData must be at most
[2018] and EIP-2384 by Conner [2019] the subtrahend κ 32 bytes.
was increased to five and nine million respectively.
The canonical gas limit Hl of a block of header H must 5. Gas and Payment
fulfil the relation:
  In order to avoid issues of network abuse and to sidestep
P (H)H l
(48) Hl < P (H)H l + ∧ the inevitable questions stemming from Turing complete-
1024 ness, all programmable computation in Ethereum is subject
 
P (H)H l to fees. The fee schedule is specified in units of gas (see Ap-
Hl > P (H)H l − ∧
1024 pendix G for the fees associated with various computation).
Hl > 5000 Thus any given fragment of programmable computation
(this includes creating contracts, making message calls,
Hs is the timestamp (in Unix’s time()) of block H and utilising and accessing account storage and executing op-
must fulfil the relation: erations on the virtual machine) has a universally agreed
(49) Hs > P (H)H s cost in terms of gas.
Every transaction has a specific amount of gas associ-
This mechanism enforces a homeostasis in terms of the ated with it: gasLimit. This is the amount of gas which
time between blocks; a smaller period between the last two is implicitly purchased from the sender’s account balance.
blocks results in an increase in the difficulty level and thus The purchase happens at the according gasPrice, also
additional computation required, lengthening the likely specified in the transaction. The transaction is consid-
next period. Conversely, if the period is too large, the ered invalid if the account balance cannot support such
difficulty, and expected time to the next block, is reduced. a purchase. It is named gasLimit since any unused gas
The nonce, Hn , must satisfy the relations: at the end of the transaction is refunded (at the same
2256 rate of purchase) to the sender’s account. Gas does not
(50) n6 ∧ m = Hm exist outside of the execution of a transaction. Thus for
Hd
accounts with trusted code associated, a relatively high
with (n, m) = PoW(Hn , Hn , d). gas limit may be set and left alone.
Where Hn is the new block’s header H, but without the In general, Ether used to purchase gas that is not re-
nonce and mix-hash components, d being the current DAG, funded is delivered to the beneficiary address, the address
a large data set needed to compute the mix-hash, and PoW of an account typically under the control of the miner.
is the proof-of-work function (see section 11.5): this evalu- Transactors are free to specify any gasPrice that they
ates to an array with the first item being the mix-hash, to wish, however miners are free to ignore transactions as
prove that a correct DAG has been used, and the second they choose. A higher gas price on a transaction will there-
item being a pseudo-random number cryptographically fore cost the sender more in terms of Ether and deliver
dependent on H and d. Given an approximately uniform a greater value to the miner and thus will more likely be
distribution in the range [0, 264 ), the expected time to find selected for inclusion by more miners. Miners, in general,
a solution is proportional to the difficulty, Hd . will choose to advertise the minimum gas price for which
This is the foundation of the security of the blockchain they will execute transactions and transactors will be free
and is the fundamental reason why a malicious node can- to canvas these prices in determining what gas price to
not propagate newly created blocks that would otherwise offer. Since there will be a (weighted) distribution of min-
overwrite (“rewrite”) history. Because the nonce must sat- imum acceptable gas prices, transactors will necessarily
isfy this requirement, and because its satisfaction depends have a trade-off to make between lowering the gas price
on the contents of the block and in turn its composed and maximising the chance that their transaction will be
transactions, creating new, valid, blocks is difficult and, mined in a timely manner.
over time, requires approximately the total compute power
of the trustworthy portion of the mining peers.
6. Transaction Execution
Thus we are able to define the block header validity
function V (H): The execution of a transaction is the most complex part
of the Ethereum protocol: it defines the state transition
2256 function Υ. It is assumed that any transactions executed
(51) V (H) ≡ n6 ∧ m = Hm ∧
Hd first pass the initial tests of intrinsic validity. These include:
Hd = D(H) ∧
(1) The transaction is well-formed RLP, with no addi-
Hg ≤ Hl ∧ tional trailing bytes;
 
P (H)H l (2) the transaction signature is valid;
Hl < P (H)H l + ∧
1024 (3) the transaction nonce is valid (equivalent to the

P (H)H l
 sender account’s current nonce);
Hl > P (H)H l − ∧ (4) the gas limit is no smaller than the intrinsic gas,
1024
g0 , used by the transaction; and
Hl > 5000 ∧
(5) the sender account balance contains at least the
Hs > P (H)H s ∧ cost, v0 , required in up-front payment.
Hi = P (H)H i + 1 ∧ Formally, we consider the function Υ, with T being a
kHx k ≤ 32 transaction and σ the state:
where (n, m) = PoW(Hn , Hn , d) (52) σ 0 = Υ(σ, T )
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 8

Thus σ 0 is the post-transactional state. We also define account of the sender, S(T ), is incremented by one and the
g
Υ to evaluate to the amount of gas used in the execution balance is reduced by part of the up-front cost, Tg Tp . The
of a transaction, Υl to evaluate to the transaction’s accrued gas available for the proceeding computation, g, is defined
log items and Υz to evaluate to the status code resulting as Tg − g0 . The computation, whether contract creation
from the transaction. These will be formally defined later. or a message call, results in an eventual state (which may
legally be equivalent to the current state), the change to
6.1. Substate. Throughout transaction execution, we ac- which is deterministic and never invalid: there can be no
crue certain information that is acted upon immediately invalid transactions from this point.
following the transaction. We call this the accrued transac- We define the checkpoint state σ 0 :
tion substate, or accrued substate for short, and represent
it as A, which is a tuple: (60) σ0 ≡ σ except:
(61) σ 0 [S(T )]b ≡ σ[S(T )]b − Tg Tp
(53) A ≡ (As , Al , At , Ar )
(62) σ 0 [S(T )]n ≡ σ[S(T )]n + 1
The tuple contents include As , the self-destruct set: a
set of accounts that will be discarded following the trans- Evaluating σ P from σ 0 depends on the transaction
action’s completion. Al is the log series: this is a series of type; either contract creation or message call; we define
archived and indexable ‘checkpoints’ in VM code execu- the tuple of post-execution provisional state σ P , remaining
tion that allow for contract-calls to be easily tracked by gas g 0 , accrued substate A and status code z:
onlookers external to the Ethereum world (such as decen- (63)

tralised application front-ends). At is the set of touched Λ4 (σ 0 , S(T ), To , g,

accounts, of which the empty ones are deleted at the end

0
 Tp , Tv , Ti , 0, ∅, >) if Tt = ∅
of a transaction. Finally there is Ar , the refund balance, (σ P , g , A, z) ≡

Θ 4 (σ 0 , S(T ), T o , T t , T t ,
increased through using the SSTORE instruction in order 
g, Tp , Tv , Tv , Td , 0, >) otherwise

to reset contract storage to zero from some non-zero value.
Though not immediately refunded, it is allowed to partially where g is the amount of gas remaining after deducting
offset the total execution costs. the basic amount required to pay for the existence of the
We define the empty accrued substate A0 to have no transaction:
self-destructs, no logs, no touched accounts and a zero (64) g ≡ Tg − g0
refund balance:
and To is the original transactor, which can differ from the
(54) A0 ≡ (∅, (), ∅, 0) sender in the case of a message call or contract creation
not directly triggered by a transaction but coming from
6.2. Execution. We define intrinsic gas g0 , the amount of
the execution of EVM-code.
gas this transaction requires to be paid prior to execution,
Note we use Θ4 and Λ4 to denote the fact that only the
as follows:
( first four components of the functions’ values are taken;
X Gtxdatazero if i = 0 the final represents the message-call’s output value (a byte
(55) g0 ≡
i∈Ti ,Td
G txdatanonzero otherwise array) and is unused in the context of transaction evalua-
( tion.
Gtxcreate if Tt = ∅ After the message call or contract creation is processed,
(56) +
0 otherwise the refund counter has to be incremented for the accounts
(57) + Gtransaction that were self-destructed throughout its invocation.
X
where Ti , Td means the series of bytes of the trans- (65) A0r ≡ Ar + Rself destruct
i∈As
action’s associated data and initialisation EVM-code, de-
pending on whether the transaction is for contract-creation Then the state is finalised by determining the amount
or message-call. Gtxcreate is added if the transaction is to be refunded, g ∗ from the remaining gas, g 0 , plus some
contract-creating, but not if a result of EVM-code. G is allowance from the refund counter, to the sender at the
fully defined in Appendix G. original rate.
The up-front cost v0 is calculated as: Tg − g 0 k 0
j 
∗ 0
(66) g ≡ g + min , Ar
(58) v0 ≡ Tg Tp + Tv 2
The validity is determined as: The total refundable amount is the legitimately remain-
ing gas g 0 , added to Ar , with the latter component being
(59) S(T ) 6= ∅ ∧ capped up to a maximum of half (rounded down) of the
σ[S(T )] 6 = ∅ ∧ total amount used Tg − g 0 . Therefore, g ∗ is the total gas
Tn = σ[S(T )]n ∧ that remains after the transaction has been executed.
g0 6 Tg ∧ The Ether for the gas is given to the miner, whose
v0 6 σ[S(T )]b ∧ address is specified as the beneficiary of the present block
Tg 6 BH l − `(BR )u B. So we define the pre-final state σ ∗ in terms of the
Note the final condition; the sum of the transaction’s provisional state σ P :
gas limit, Tg , and the gas utilised in this block prior, given (67) σ∗ ≡ σP except
by `(BR )u , must be no greater than the block’s gasLimit, ∗
(68) σ [S(T )]b ≡ σ P [S(T )]b + g ∗ Tp
BH l .
The execution of a valid transaction begins with an (69) σ ∗ [m]b ≡ σ P [m]b + (Tg − g ∗ )Tp
irrevocable change made to the state: the nonce of the (70) m ≡ BH c
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 9

The final state, σ 0 , is reached after deleting all accounts σ ∗ [a] 1, v + v 0 , TRIE(∅), KEC ()



(83) =
that either appear in the self-destruct set or are touched (
∅ if σ[s] = ∅ ∧ v = 0
and empty: (84) σ ∗ [s] =
0 ∗
a∗ otherwise
(71) σ ≡ σ except
(85) a∗ ≡ (σ[s]n , σ[s]b − v, σ[s]s , σ[s]c )
(72) ∀i ∈ As : σ 0 [i] = ∅
0
(73) ∀i ∈ At : σ 0 [i] = ∅ if DEAD(σ ∗, i) where v is the account’s pre-existing value, in the event
it was previously in existence:
And finally, we specify Υg , the total gas used in this (
transaction Υl , the logs created by this transaction and 0 0 if σ[a] = ∅
(86) v ≡
Υz , the status code of this transaction: σ[a]b otherwise
(74) Υg (σ, T ) ≡ Tg − g ∗ Finally, the account is initialised through the execution
(75) l
Υ (σ, T ) ≡ Al of the initialising EVM code i according to the execution
model (see section 9). Code execution can effect several
(76) Υz (σ, T ) ≡ z
events that are not internal to the execution state: the
These are used to help define the transaction receipt account’s storage can be altered, further accounts can be
and are also used later for state and nonce validation. created and further message calls can be made. As such,
the code execution function Ξ evaluates to a tuple of the re-
7. Contract Creation sultant state σ ∗∗ , available gas remaining g ∗∗ , the accrued
There are a number of intrinsic parameters used when substate A and the body code of the account o.
creating an account: sender (s), original transactor (o),
available gas (g), gas price (p), endowment (v) together (87) (σ ∗∗ , g ∗∗ , A, o) ≡ Ξ(σ ∗ , g, I, {s, a})
with an arbitrary length byte array, i, the initialisation
EVM code, the present depth of the message-call/contract- where I contains the parameters of the execution environ-
creation stack (e), the salt for new account’s address (ζ) ment, that is:
and finally the permission to make modifications to the (88) Ia ≡ a
state (w). The salt ζ might be missing (ζ = ∅); formally, (89) Io ≡ o
(77) ζ ∈ B32 ∪ B0 (90) Ip ≡ p
If the creation was caused by CREATE2, then ζ 6= ∅. (91) Id ≡ ()
We define the creation function formally as the function (92) Is ≡ s
Λ, which evaluates from these values, together with the
(93) Iv ≡ v
state σ to the tuple containing the new state, remaining
gas, accrued transaction substate and an error message (94) Ib ≡ i
(σ 0 , g 0 , A, o), as in section 6: (95) Ie ≡ e
0 0 (96) Iw ≡ w
(78) (σ , g , A, z, o) ≡ Λ(σ, s, o, g, p, v, i, e, ζ, w)
The address of the new account is defined as being the Id evaluates to the empty tuple as there is no input data
rightmost 160 bits of the Keccak hash of the RLP encoding to this call. IH has no special treatment and is determined
of the structure containing only the sender and the account from the blockchain.
nonce. For CREATE2 the rule is different and is described Code execution depletes gas, and gas may not go below
in EIP-1014 by Buterin [2018]. Combining the two cases, zero, thus execution may exit before the code has come
we define the resultant address for the new account a: to a natural halting state. In this (and several other) ex-
ceptional cases we say an out-of-gas (OOG) exception has
(79) a ≡ A(s, σ[s]n − 1, ζ, i)

 occurred: The evaluated state is defined as being the empty
(80)A(s, n, ζ, i) ≡ B96..255 KEC B(s, n, ζ, i) set, ∅, and the entire create operation should have no effect
(
on the state, effectively leaving it as it was immediately
RLP (s, n) if ζ = ∅ prior to attempting the creation.
(81)B(s, n, ζ, i) ≡
(255) · s · ζ · KEC(i) otherwise If the initialization code completes successfully, a final
contract-creation cost is paid, the code-deposit cost, c,
where · is the concatenation of byte arrays, Ba..b (X)
proportional to the size of the created contract’s code:
evaluates to a binary value containing the bits of indices
in the range [a, b] of the binary data X, and σ[x] is the (97) c ≡ Gcodedeposit × kok
address state of x, or ∅ if none exists. Note we use one
If there is not enough gas remaining to pay this, i.e.
fewer than the sender’s nonce value; we assert that we
g ∗∗ < c, then we also declare an out-of-gas exception.
have incremented the sender account’s nonce prior to this
The gas remaining will be zero in any such exceptional
call, and so the value used is the sender’s nonce at the
condition, i.e. if the creation was conducted as the recep-
beginning of the responsible transaction or VM operation.
tion of a transaction, then this doesn’t affect payment of
The account’s nonce is initially defined as one, the bal-
the intrinsic cost of contract creation; it is paid regardless.
ance as the value passed, the storage as empty and the
However, the value of the transaction is not transferred to
code hash as the Keccak 256-bit hash of the empty string;
the aborted contract’s address when we are out-of-gas.
the sender’s balance is also reduced by the value passed.
If such an exception does not occur, then the remaining
Thus the mutated state becomes σ ∗ :
gas is refunded to the originator and the now-altered state
(82) σ∗ ≡ σ except: is allowed to persist. Thus formally, we may specify the
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 10

resultant state, gas, accrued substate and status code as component—the output data denoted by the byte array o.
(σ 0 , g 0 , A, z) where: This is ignored when executing transactions, however mes-
sage calls can be initiated due to VM-code execution and
(98) in this case this information is used.

( (102) (σ 0 , g 0 , A, z, o) ≡ Θ(σ, s, o, r, c, g, p, v, ṽ, d, e, w)

0 0 if F
g ≡
g ∗∗ − c otherwise
(99) Note that we need to differentiate between the value that
 is to be transferred, v, from the value apparent in the

σ if F ∨ σ ∗∗ = ∅ execution context, ṽ, for the DELEGATECALL instruction.

∗∗
σ except:

We define σ 1 , the first transitional state as the orig-


0
σ ≡ σ 0 [a] = ∅ if DEAD(σ ∗∗ , a) inal state but with the value transferred from sender to
σ ∗∗ except: recipient:




σ 0 [a]c = KEC(o)

otherwise


(100) (103) σ 1 [r]b ≡ σ[r]b + v ∧ σ 1 [s]b ≡ σ[s]b − v

(
∗∗
0 if F ∨ σ =∅
z≡
1 otherwise unless s = r.
where Throughout the present work, it is assumed that if σ 1 [r]
was originally undefined, it will be created as an account
(101)



with no code or state and zero balance and nonce. Thus
F ≡ σ[a] 6= ∅ ∧ σ[a]c 6= KEC () ∨ σ[a]n 6= 0 ∨
the previous equation should be taken to mean:
∗∗
(σ = ∅ ∧ o = ∅) ∨
∗∗
g <c ∨
(104) σ 1 ≡ σ 01 except:
kok > 24576
The exception in the determination of σ 0 dictates that
o, the resultant byte sequence from the execution of the (
initialisation code, specifies the final body code for the ∅ if σ 01 [s] = ∅ ∧ v = 0
newly-created account. (105) σ 1 [s] ≡
a1 otherwise
Note that intention is that the result is either a suc-
cessfully created new contract with its endowment, or no
new contract with no transfer of value. In addition, ob-
serve that if the execution of the initialising code reverts
a1 ≡ σ 01 [s]n , σ 01 [s]b − v, σ 01 [s]s , σ 01 [s]c


(σ ∗∗ = ∅ ∧ o 6= ∅), the resultant gas g 0 is not depleted (106)
(provided there was no other exception), but no new ac-
count is created.
7.1. Subtleties. Note that while the initialisation code
is executing, the newly created address exists but with (107) and σ 01 ≡ σ except:
no intrinsic body code4. Thus any message call received
by it during this time causes no code to be executed. If
(108)
the initialisation execution ends with a SELFDESTRUCT 
instruction, the matter is moot since the account will be σ 01 [r] ≡ (0, v, TRIE(∅), KEC(()))
 if σ[r] = ∅ ∧ v =
6 0
deleted before the transaction is completed. For a normal σ 01 [r] ≡ ∅ if σ[r] = ∅ ∧ v = 0
 0
σ 1 [r] ≡ a01

STOP code, or if the code returned is otherwise empty, then otherwise
the state is left with a zombie account, and any remaining
balance will be locked into the account forever.

8. Message Call
(109) a01 ≡ (σ[r]n , σ[r]b + v, σ[r]s , σ[r]c )
In the case of executing a message call, several param-
eters are required: sender (s), transaction originator (o),
recipient (r), the account whose code is to be executed (c, The account’s associated code (identified as the frag-
usually the same as recipient), available gas (g), value (v) ment whose Keccak hash is σ[c]c ) is executed according to
and gas price (p) together with an arbitrary length byte the execution model (see section 9). Just as with contract
array, d, the input data of the call, the present depth of creation, if the execution halts in an exceptional fashion
the message-call/contract-creation stack (e) and finally the (i.e. due to an exhausted gas supply, stack underflow, in-
permission to make modifications to the state (w). valid jump destination or invalid instruction), then no gas
Aside from evaluating to a new state and accrued is refunded to the caller and the state is reverted to the
transaction substate, message calls also have an extra point immediately prior to balance transfer (i.e. σ).
4During initialization code execution, EXTCODESIZE on the address should return zero, which is the length of the code of the account while
CODESIZE should return the length of the initialization code (as defined in H.2).
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 11

a parameter, gas, which limits the total amount of compu-

tation done.
(
σ if σ ∗∗ = ∅
(110) σ0 ≡ ∗∗
σ otherwise 9.1. Basics. The EVM is a simple stack-based architec-
ture. The word size of the machine (and thus size of stack

0
 if σ ∗∗ = ∅ ∧
items) is 256-bit. This was chosen to facilitate the Keccak-
(111) g0 ≡ o=∅
 ∗∗
 256 hash scheme and elliptic-curve computations. The
g otherwise memory model is a simple word-addressed byte array. The
(
0 if σ ∗∗ = ∅ stack has a maximum size of 1024. The machine also has
z ≡ an independent storage model; this is similar in concept
1 otherwise
to the memory but rather than a byte array, it is a word-
(112) (σ ∗∗ , g ∗∗ , A, o) ≡ Ξ addressable word array. Unlike memory, which is volatile,
(113) Ia ≡ r storage is non volatile and is maintained as part of the
(114) Io ≡ o system state. All locations in both storage and memory
are well-defined initially as zero.
(115) Ip ≡ p The machine does not follow the standard von Neu-
(116) Id ≡ d mann architecture. Rather than storing program code
(117) Is ≡ s in generally-accessible memory or storage, it is stored
(118) Iv ≡ ṽ separately in a virtual ROM interactable only through
a specialised instruction.
(119) Ie ≡ e The machine can have exceptional execution for several
(120) Iw ≡ w reasons, including stack underflows and invalid instruc-
(121) t ≡ {s, r} tions. Like the out-of-gas exception, they do not leave
state changes intact. Rather, the machine halts immedi-
where
 ately and reports the issue to the execution agent (either

ΞECREC (σ 1 , g, I, t) if r = 1 the transaction processor or, recursively, the spawning

ΞSHA256 (σ 1 , g, I, t) if r = 2 execution environment) which will deal with it separately.





ΞRIP160 (σ 1 , g, I, t) if r = 3


9.2. Fees Overview. Fees (denominated in gas) are






ΞID (σ 1 , g, I, t) if r = 4 charged under three distinct circumstances, all three as

Ξ
EXPMOD (σ 1 , g, I, t) if r = 5 prerequisite to the execution of an operation. The first
(122) Ξ≡


Ξ BN ADD (σ 1 , g, I, t) if r = 6 and most common is the fee intrinsic to the computation



ΞBN MUL (σ 1 , g, I, t) if r = 7 of the operation (see Appendix G). Secondly, gas may be


ΞSNARKV (σ 1 , g, I, t) deducted in order to form the payment for a subordinate
 if r = 8

 message call or contract creation; this forms part of the
ΞBLAKE2 F (σ 1 , g, I, t) if r = 9


payment for CREATE, CREATE2, CALL and CALLCODE.



Ξ(σ 1 , g, I, t) otherwise

Finally, gas may be paid due to an increase in the usage
of the memory.
(123) Let KEC(Ib ) = σ[c]c Over an account’s execution, the total fee for memory-
usage payable is proportional to smallest multiple of 32
It is assumed that the client will have stored the pair
bytes that are required such that all memory indices
(KEC(Ib ), Ib ) at some point prior in order to make the
(whether for read or write) are included in the range. This
determination of Ib feasible.
is paid for on a just-in-time basis; as such, referencing an
As can be seen, there are nine exceptions to the usage
area of memory at least 32 bytes greater than any previ-
of the general execution framework Ξ for evaluation of the
ously indexed memory will certainly result in an additional
message call: these are so-called ‘precompiled’ contracts,
memory usage fee. Due to this fee it is highly unlikely
meant as a preliminary piece of architecture that may later
addresses will ever go above 32-bit bounds. That said,
become native extensions. The contracts in addresses 1 to
implementations must be able to manage this eventuality.
9 execute the elliptic curve public key recovery function,
Storage fees have a slightly nuanced behaviour—to in-
the SHA2 256-bit hash scheme, the RIPEMD 160-bit hash
centivise minimisation of the use of storage (which corre-
scheme, the identity function, arbitrary precision modular
sponds directly to a larger state database on all nodes),
exponentiation, elliptic curve addition, elliptic curve scalar
the execution fee for an operation that clears an entry in
multiplication, an elliptic curve pairing check, and the
the storage is not only waived, a qualified refund is given;
BLAKE2 compression function F respectively.
in fact, this refund is effectively paid up-front since the
Their full formal definition is in Appendix E.
initial usage of a storage location costs substantially more
9. Execution Model than normal usage.
See Appendix H for a rigorous definition of the EVM
The execution model specifies how the system state is gas cost.
altered given a series of bytecode instructions and a small
tuple of environmental data. This is specified through a 9.3. Execution Environment. In addition to the sys-
formal model of a virtual state machine, known as the tem state σ, and the remaining gas for computation g,
Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). It is a quasi-Turing- there are several pieces of important information used in
complete machine; the quasi qualification comes from the the execution environment that the execution agent must
fact that the computation is intrinsically bounded through provide; these are contained in the tuple I:
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 12

• Ia , the address of the account which owns the code (134)

that is executing. ∅, µ, A0 , I, ∅


 if Z(σ, µ, I)
• Io , the sender address of the transaction that orig-


 ∅, µ0 , A0 , I, o


if w = REVERT
inated this execution. X (σ, µ, A, I) ≡
O(σ, µ, A, I) · o if o 6= ∅
• Ip , the price of gas in the transaction that origi- 



nated this execution. X O(σ, µ, A, I) otherwise
• Id , the byte array that is the input data to this where
execution; if the execution agent is a transaction,
(135) o ≡ H(µ, I)
this would be the transaction data.
• Is , the address of the account which caused the (136) (a, b, c, d) · e ≡ (a, b, c, d, e)
0
code to be executing; if the execution agent is a (137) µ ≡ µ except:
transaction, this would be the transaction sender. (138) µ0g ≡ µg − C(σ, µ, I)
• Iv , the value, in Wei, passed to this account as
part of the same procedure as execution; if the Note that, when we evaluate Ξ, we drop the fourth
execution agent is a transaction, this would be the element I 0 and extract the remaining gas µ0g from the
transaction value. resultant machine state µ0 .
• Ib , the byte array that is the machine code to be X is thus cycled (recursively here, but implementations
executed. are generally expected to use a simple iterative loop) until
• IH , the block header of the present block. either Z becomes true indicating that the present state is
• Ie , the depth of the present message-call or exceptional and that the machine must be halted and any
contract-creation (i.e. the number of CALLs or changes discarded or until H becomes a series (rather than
CREATE(2)s being executed at present). the empty set) indicating that the machine has reached a
• Iw , the permission to make modifications to the controlled halt.
state. 9.4.1. Machine State. The machine state µ is defined as
The execution model defines the function Ξ, which can the tuple (g, pc, m, i, s) which are the gas available, the
compute the resultant state σ 0 , the remaining gas g 0 , the program counter pc ∈ N256 , the memory contents, the
accrued substate A and the resultant output, o, given these active number of words in memory (counting continuously
definitions. For the present context, we will define it as: from position 0), and the stack contents. The memory
contents µm are a series of zeroes of size 2256 .
(124) (σ 0 , g 0 , A, o) ≡ Ξ(σ, g, I) For the ease of reading, the instruction mnemonics,
where we will remember that A, the accrued substate, written in small-caps (e.g. ADD), should be interpreted as
is defined as the tuple of the self-destructs set As , the log their numeric equivalents; the full table of instructions and
series Al , the touched accounts At and the refund balance their specifics is given in Appendix H.
Ar : For the purposes of defining Z, H and O, we define w
as the current operation to be executed:
(125) A ≡ (As , Al , At , Ar ) (
Ib [µpc ] if µpc < kIb k
(139) w≡
9.4. Execution Overview. We must now define the Ξ STOP otherwise
function. In most practical implementations this will be We also assume the fixed amounts of δ and α, specifying
modelled as an iterative progression of the pair comprising the stack items removed and added, both subscriptable
the full system state, σ and the machine state, µ. For- on the instruction and an instruction cost function C eval-
mally, we define it recursively with a function X. This uating to the full cost, in gas, of executing the given
uses an iterator function O (which defines the result of a instruction.
single cycle of the state machine) together with functions
Z which determines if the present state is an exceptional 9.4.2. Exceptional Halting. The exceptional halting func-
halting state of the machine and H, specifying the output tion Z is defined as:
data of the instruction if and only if the present state is a (140)
normal halting state of the machine. Z(σ, µ, I) ≡ µg < C(σ, µ, I) ∨
The empty sequence, denoted (), is not equal to the δw = ∅ ∨
empty set, denoted ∅; this is important when interpreting kµs k < δw ∨
the output of H, which evaluates to ∅ when execution is to (w = JUMP ∧ µs [0] ∈ / D(Ib )) ∨
continue but a series (potentially empty) when execution (w = JUMPI ∧ µs [1] 6= 0 ∧
should halt. µs [0] ∈
/ D(Ib )) ∨
(w = RETURNDATACOPY ∧
(126) Ξ(σ, g, I, T ) ≡ (σ 0, µ0g , A, o) µs [1] + µs [2] > kµo k) ∨
(σ 0 , µ0, A, ..., o) X (σ, µ, A0, I) kµs k − δw + αw > 1024 ∨


(127) ≡
(128) µg ≡ g (¬Iw ∧ W (w, µ)) ∨
(w = SSTORE ∧ µg 6 Gcallstipend )
(129) µpc ≡ 0
where
(130) µm ≡ (0, 0, ...)
(141) W (w, µ) ≡ w ∈ {CREATE, CREATE2, SSTORE,
(131) µi ≡ 0
SELFDESTRUCT} ∨
(132) µs ≡ () LOG0 ≤ w ∧ w ≤ LOG4 ∨
(133) µo ≡ () w = CALL ∧ µs [2] 6= 0
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 13

This states that the execution is in an exceptional halt- J, subscripted by one of two instructions, which evaluates
ing state if there is insufficient gas, if the instruction is to the according value:
invalid (and therefore its δ subscript is undefined), if there
are insufficient stack items, if a JUMP/JUMPI destination (150) µ0g ≡ µg − C(σ, µ, I)

is invalid, the new stack size would be larger than 1024 or JJUMP (µ) if w = JUMP

state modification is attempted during a static call. The (151) µ0pc ≡ JJUMPI (µ) if w = JUMPI
astute reader will realise that this implies that no instruc- 
N (µpc , w) otherwise

tion can, through its execution, cause an exceptional halt.
Also, the execution is in an exceptional halting state if In general, we assume the memory, self-destruct set and
the gas left prior to executing an SSTORE instruction is system state don’t change:
less than or equal to the call stipend Gcallstipend . The
last condition was introduced in EIP-1706 by Forshtat and (152) µ0m ≡ µm
Weiss [2019] (part of EIP-2200 by Tang [2019]). (153) µ0i ≡ µi
0
9.4.3. Jump Destination Validity. We previously used D (154) A ≡ A
as the function to determine the set of valid jump desti- (155) σ0 ≡ σ
nations given the code that is being run. We define this
as any position in the code occupied by a JUMPDEST However, instructions do typically alter one or several
instruction. components of these values. Altered components listed by
All such positions must be on valid instruction bound- instruction are noted in Appendix H, alongside values for
aries, rather than sitting in the data portion of PUSH α and δ and a formal description of the gas requirements.
operations and must appear within the explicitly defined
portion of the code (rather than in the implicitly defined 10. Blocktree to Blockchain
STOP operations that trail it).
The canonical blockchain is a path from root to leaf
Formally:
through the entire block tree. In order to have consensus
(142) D(c) ≡ DJ (c, 0) over which path it is, conceptually we identify the path
where: that has had the most computation done upon it, or, the
(143) heaviest path. Clearly one factor that helps determine the

 {} if i > kck heaviest path is the block number of the leaf, equivalent

 to the number of blocks, not counting the unmined genesis
 {i} ∪ DJ (c, N (i, c[i]))
DJ (c, i) ≡ block, in the path. The longer the path, the greater the


 if c[i] = JUMPDEST total mining effort that must have been done in order to

DJ (c, N (i, c[i])) otherwise arrive at the leaf. This is akin to existing schemes, such as
where N is the next valid instruction position in the that employed in Bitcoin-derived protocols.
code, skipping the data of a PUSH instruction, if any: Since a block header includes the difficulty, the header
(144) alone is enough to validate the computation done. Any
 block contributes toward the total computation or total
i + w − PUSH1 + 2

difficulty of a chain.
N (i, w) ≡ if w ∈ [PUSH1, PUSH32] Thus we define the total difficulty of block B recursively

i+1 otherwise

as:
9.4.4. Normal Halting. The normal halting function H is (156) Bt ≡ Bt0 + Bd
defined: 0
(157) B ≡ P (BH )
(145)
As such given a block B, Bt is its total difficulty, B 0 is

HRETURN (µ) if w ∈ {RETURN, REVERT}

H(µ, I) ≡ () if w ∈ {STOP, SELFDESTRUCT} its parent block and Bd is its difficulty.

otherwise

∅
The data-returning halt operations, RETURN and 11. Block Finalisation
REVERT, have a special function HRETURN . Note also The process of finalising a block involves four stages:
the difference between the empty sequence and the empty
(1) Validate (or, if mining, determine) ommers;
set as discussed here.
(2) validate (or, if mining, determine) transactions;
9.5. The Execution Cycle. Stack items are added or (3) apply rewards;
removed from the left-most, lower-indexed portion of the (4) verify (or, if mining, compute a valid) state and
series; all other items remain unchanged: block nonce.
≡ (σ 0 , µ0 , A0 , I)


(146) O (σ, µ, A, I)
11.1. Ommer Validation. The validation of ommer
(147) ∆ ≡ αw − δw headers means nothing more than verifying that each om-
(148) kµ0s k ≡ kµs k + ∆ mer header is both a valid header and satisfies the relation
(149) ∀x ∈ [αw , kµ0s k) : µ0s [x] ≡ µs [x − ∆] of N th-generation ommer to the present block where N ≤ 6.
The maximum of ommer headers is two. Formally:
The gas is reduced by the instruction’s gas cost and
^
for most instructions, the program counter increments on (158) kBU k 6 2 V (U) ∧ k(U, P (BH )H , 6)
each cycle, for the three exceptions, we assume a function U∈BU
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 14

where k denotes the “is-kin” property: B0:

(159)  (169) Φ(B) ≡ B0 : B0 = B∗ except:
false
 if n=0
2 256
k(U, H, n) ≡ s(U, H) (170) Bn0 = n: x6
 Hd
∨ k(U, P (H)H , n − 1) otherwise
 0 ∗
(171) Bm = m with (x, m) = PoW(Bn , n, d)
and s denotes the “is-sibling” property: (172) B∗ ≡ B except: Br∗ = r(Π(Γ(B), B))
(160)
With d being a dataset as specified in Appendix J.
s(U, H) ≡ (P (H) = P (U ) ∧ H 6= U ∧ U ∈ / B(H)U )
As specified at the beginning of the present work, Π is
where B(H) and P (H) are the block and the parent block the state-transition function, which is defined in terms of
of the corresponding header H respectively. Ω, the block finalisation function and Υ, the transaction-
evaluation function, both now well-defined.
11.2. Transaction Validation. The given gasUsed As previously detailed, R[n]z , R[n]l and R[n]u are the
must correspond faithfully to the transactions listed: BH g , nth corresponding status code, logs and cumulative gas
the total gas used in the block, must be equal to the used after each transaction (R[n]b , the fourth component
accumulated gas used according to the final transaction: in the tuple, has already been defined in terms of the logs).
(161) BH g = `(R)u We also define the nth state σ[n], which is defined simply
as the state resulting from applying the corresponding
11.3. Reward Application. The application of rewards transaction to the state resulting from the previous trans-
to a block involves raising the balance of the accounts of action (or the block’s initial state in the case of the first
the beneficiary address of the block and each ommer by a such transaction):
certain amount. We raise the block’s beneficiary account
(
Γ(B) if n < 0
by Rblock ; for each ommer, we raise the block’s beneficiary (173) σ[n] =
1 Υ(σ[n − 1], BT [n]) otherwise
by an additional 32 of the block reward and the benefi-
ciary of the ommer gets rewarded depending on the block In the case of BR [n]u , we take a similar approach defin-
number. Formally we define the function Ω: ing each item as the gas used in evaluating the correspond-
ing transaction summed with the previous item (or zero,
(162)
if it is the first), giving us a running total:
Ω(B, σ) ≡ σ0 : σ0 = σ except: 
0 if n < 0
 
kBU k 
(163) σ 0 [BH c ]b = σ[BH c ]b + 1 + Rblock (174) R[n]u = Υg (σ[n − 1], BT [n])
32 
+R[n − 1]u otherwise

(164)
∀U ∈ BU : For R[n]l , we utilise the Υl function that we conve-
(
∅ if σ[Uc ] = ∅ ∧ R = 0 niently defined in the transaction execution function.
σ 0 [Uc ] =
a0 otherwise (175) R[n]l = Υl (σ[n − 1], BT [n])
(165) a0 ≡ (σ[Uc ]n , σ[Uc ]b + R, σ[Uc ]s , σ[Uc ]c ) We define R[n]z in a similar manner.
 
1 (176) R[n]z = Υz (σ[n − 1], BT [n])
(166) R ≡ 1 + (Ui − BH i ) Rblock
8
Finally, we define Π as the new state given the block re-
If there are collisions of the beneficiary addresses be- ward function Ω applied to the final transaction’s resultant
tween ommers and the block (i.e. two ommers with the state, `(σ):
same beneficiary address or an ommer with the same bene-
ficiary address as the present block), additions are applied (177) Π(σ, B) ≡ Ω(B, `(σ))
cumulatively. Thus the complete block-transition mechanism is de-
We define the block reward in Wei: fined, except for PoW, the proof-of-work function.

5 if Hi < 4370000
 11.5. Mining Proof-of-Work. The mining proof-of-
(167) Rblock = 1018 × 3 if 4370000 6 Hi < 7280000 work (PoW) exists as a cryptographically secure nonce
that proves beyond reasonable doubt that a particular

2 if Hi > 7280000

amount of computation has been expended in the deter-
11.4. State & Nonce Validation. We may now define mination of some token value n. It is utilised to enforce
the function, Γ, that maps a block B to its initiation state: the blockchain security by giving meaning and credence
(168) ( to the notion of difficulty (and, by extension, total dif-
σ0 if P (BH ) = ∅ ficulty). However, since mining new blocks comes with
Γ(B) ≡ an attached reward, the proof-of-work not only functions
σ i : TRIE(LS (σ i )) = P (BH )H r otherwise
as a method of securing confidence that the blockchain
Here, TRIE(LS (σ i )) means the hash of the root node of will remain canonical into the future, but also as a wealth
a trie of state σ i ; it is assumed that implementations will distribution mechanism.
store this in the state database, which is trivial and efficient For both reasons, there are two important goals of the
since the trie is by nature an immutable data structure. proof-of-work function; firstly, it should be as accessible as
And finally we define Φ, the block transition function, possible to as many people as possible. The requirement
which maps an incomplete block B to a complete block of, or reward from, specialised and uncommon hardware
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 15

should be minimised. This makes the distribution model of items from the cache. Full clients and miners store the
as open as possible, and, ideally, makes the act of mining a dataset. The dataset grows linearly with time.
simple swap from electricity to Ether at roughly the same Mining involves grabbing random slices of the dataset
rate for anyone around the world. and hashing them together. Verification can be done with
Secondly, it should not be possible to make super-linear low memory by using the cache to regenerate the specific
profits, and especially not so with a high initial barrier. pieces of the dataset that you need, so you only need to
Such a mechanism allows a well-funded adversary to gain store the cache. The large dataset is updated once every
a troublesome amount of the network’s total mining power Jepoch blocks, so the vast majority of a miner’s effort will
and as such gives them a super-linear reward (thus skewing be reading the dataset, not making changes to it. The
distribution in their favour) as well as reducing the network mentioned parameters as well as the algorithm is explained
security. in detail in Appendix J.
One plague of the Bitcoin world is ASICs. These are
specialised pieces of compute hardware that exist only to 12. Implementing Contracts
do a single task (Smith [1997]). In Bitcoin’s case the task is There are several patterns of contracts engineering that
the SHA256 hash function (Courtois et al. [2014]). While allow particular useful behaviours; two of these that we
ASICs exist for a proof-of-work function, both goals are will briefly discuss are data feeds and random numbers.
placed in jeopardy. Because of this, a proof-of-work func-
tion that is ASIC-resistant (i.e. difficult or economically 12.1. Data Feeds. A data feed contract is one which pro-
inefficient to implement in specialised compute hardware) vides a single service: it gives access to information from
has been identified as the proverbial silver bullet. the external world within Ethereum. The accuracy and
Two directions exist for ASIC resistance; firstly make timeliness of this information is not guaranteed and it is
it sequential memory-hard, i.e. engineer the function such the task of a secondary contract author—the contract that
that the determination of the nonce requires a lot of mem- utilises the data feed—to determine how much trust can
ory and bandwidth such that the memory cannot be used be placed in any single data feed.
in parallel to discover multiple nonces simultaneously. The The general pattern involves a single contract within
second is to make the type of computation it would need to Ethereum which, when given a message call, replies with
do general-purpose; the meaning of “specialised hardware” some timely information concerning an external phenome-
for a general-purpose task set is, naturally, general purpose non. An example might be the local temperature of New
hardware and as such commodity desktop computers are York City. This would be implemented as a contract that
likely to be pretty close to “specialised hardware” for the returned that value of some known point in storage. Of
task. For Ethereum 1.0 we have chosen the first path. course this point in storage must be maintained with the
More formally, the proof-of-work function takes the correct such temperature, and thus the second part of the
form of PoW: pattern would be for an external server to run an Ethereum
(178) node, and immediately on discovery of a new block, creates
2256 a new valid transaction, sent to the contract, updating said
m = Hm ∧ n 6 with (m, n) = PoW(Hn , Hn , d) value in storage. The contract’s code would accept such
Hd
updates only from the identity contained on said server.
Where Hn is the new block’s header but without the
12.2. Random Numbers. Providing random numbers
nonce and mix-hash components; Hn is the nonce of the
within a deterministic system is, naturally, an impossible
header; d is a large data set needed to compute the mix-
task. However, we can approximate with pseudo-random
Hash and Hd is the new block’s difficulty value (i.e. the
numbers by utilising data which is generally unknowable
block difficulty from section 10). PoW is the proof-of-work
at the time of transacting. Such data might include the
function which evaluates to an array with the first item
block’s hash, the block’s timestamp and the block’s benefi-
being the mixHash and the second item being a pseudo-
ciary address. In order to make it hard for malicious miners
random number cryptographically dependent on H and d.
to control those values, one should use the BLOCKHASH
The underlying algorithm is called Ethash and is described
operation in order to use hashes of the previous 256 blocks
below.
as pseudo-random numbers. For a series of such numbers,
a trivial solution would be to add some constant amount
11.5.1. Ethash. Ethash is the PoW algorithm for Ethereum and hashing the result.
1.0. It is the latest version of Dagger-Hashimoto, intro-
13. Future Directions
duced by Buterin [2013b] and Dryja [2014], although it
can no longer appropriately be called that since many of The state database won’t be forced to maintain all past
the original features of both algorithms were drastically state trie structures into the future. It should maintain
changed with R&D from February 2015 until May 4 2015 an age for each node and eventually discard nodes that
(Jentzsch [2015]). The general route that the algorithm are neither recent enough nor checkpoints. Checkpoints,
takes is as follows: or a set of nodes in the database that allow a particular
There exists a seed which can be computed for each block’s state trie to be traversed, could be used to place a
block by scanning through the block headers up until that maximum limit on the amount of computation needed in
point. From the seed, one can compute a pseudorandom order to retrieve any state throughout the blockchain.
cache, Jcacheinit bytes in initial size. Light clients store Blockchain consolidation could be used in order to re-
the cache. From the cache, we can generate a dataset, duce the amount of blocks a client would need to download
Jdatasetinit bytes in initial size, with the property that to act as a full, mining, node. A compressed archive of the
each item in the dataset depends on only a small number trie structure at given points in time (perhaps one in every
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 16

10,000th block) could be maintained by the peer network, Adam Back. Hashcash - Amortizable Publicly Auditable
effectively recasting the genesis block. This would reduce Cost-Functions, 2002. URL http://www.hashcash.org/
the amount to be downloaded to a single archive plus a papers/amortizable.pdf.
hard maximum limit of blocks. Alex Beregszaszi and Afri Schoedon. EIP-1679: Hardfork
Finally, blockchain compression could perhaps be con- meta: Istanbul, 2019. URL https://eips.ethereum.
ducted: nodes in state trie that haven’t sent/received a org/EIPS/eip-1679.
transaction in some constant amount of blocks could be Guido Bertoni, Joan Daemen, Michal Peeters, and
thrown out, reducing both Ether-leakage and the growth Gilles Van Assche. The KECCAK SHA-3 sub-
of the state database. mission, 2011. URL https://keccak.team/files/
Keccak-submission-3.pdf.
13.1. Scalability. Scalability remains an eternal concern. Roman Boutellier and Mareike Heinzen. Pirates, Pio-
With a generalised state transition function, it becomes dif- neers, Innovators and Imitators. In Growth Through
ficult to partition and parallelise transactions to apply the Innovation, pages 85–96. Springer, 2014. URL https:
divide-and-conquer strategy. Unaddressed, the dynamic //www.springer.com/gb/book/9783319040158.
value-range of the system remains essentially fixed and as Vitalik Buterin. Ethereum: A Next-Generation Smart
the average transaction value increases, the less valuable of Contract and Decentralized Application Platform,
them become ignored, being economically pointless to in- 2013a. URL https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/
clude in the main ledger. However, several strategies exist wiki/White-Paper.
that may potentially be exploited to provide a considerably Vitalik Buterin. Dagger: A Memory-Hard to Compute,
more scalable protocol. Memory-Easy to Verify Scrypt Alternative, 2013b. URL
Some form of hierarchical structure, achieved by either http://www.hashcash.org/papers/dagger.html.
consolidating smaller lighter-weight chains into the main Vitalik Buterin. EIP-2: Homestead hard-fork changes,
block or building the main block through the incremen- 2015. URL https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2.
tal combination and adhesion (through proof-of-work) of Vitalik Buterin. EIP-100: Change difficulty adjustment
smaller transaction sets may allow parallelisation of trans- to target mean block time including uncles, April 2016a.
action combination and block-building. Parallelism could URL https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-100.
also come from a prioritised set of parallel blockchains, Vitalik Buterin. EIP-155: Simple replay attack protec-
consolidating each block and with duplicate or invalid tion, October 2016b. URL https://eips.ethereum.
transactions thrown out accordingly. org/EIPS/eip-155.
Finally, verifiable computation, if made generally avail- Vitalik Buterin. EIP-1014: Skinny CREATE2, April 2018.
able and efficient enough, may provide a route to allow the URL https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1014.
proof-of-work to be the verification of final state. Eric Conner. EIP-2384: Muir Glacier difficulty bomb
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14. Conclusion org/EIPS/eip-2384.
We have introduced, discussed and formally defined the Nicolas T. Courtois, Marek Grajek, and Rahul Naik.
protocol of Ethereum. Through this protocol the reader Optimizing SHA256 in Bitcoin Mining, pages 131–
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others in a decentralised secure social operating system. berg, 2014. ISBN 978-3-662-44893-9. doi: 10.
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B.A. Davey and H.A. Priestley. Introduction to lattices
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Many thanks to Aeron Buchanan for authoring the
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work, 2014. URL http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/
Ethash algorithm and Yoichi Hirai for doing most of the
bitcoin/meh/hashimoto.pdf.
EIP-150 changes. Important maintenance, useful correc-
Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor. Pricing via pro-
tions and suggestions were provided by a number of others
cessing or combatting junk mail. In In 12th An-
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Jutta Steiner, Nick Savers, Viktor Trón, Marko Simovic,
~naor/PAPERS/pvp.pdf.
Giacomo Tazzari and, of course, Vitalik Buterin.
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16. Availability
//eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1706.
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sage authentication code (MAC), November 2015. URL

Appendix A. Terminology
External Actor: A person or other entity able to interface to an Ethereum node, but external to the world of
Ethereum. It can interact with Ethereum through depositing signed Transactions and inspecting the blockchain
and associated state. Has one (or more) intrinsic Accounts.
Address: A 160-bit code used for identifying Accounts.
Account: Accounts have an intrinsic balance and transaction count maintained as part of the Ethereum state.
They also have some (possibly empty) EVM Code and a (possibly empty) Storage State associated with them.
Though homogenous, it makes sense to distinguish between two practical types of account: those with empty
associated EVM Code (thus the account balance is controlled, if at all, by some external entity) and those with
non-empty associated EVM Code (thus the account represents an Autonomous Object). Each Account has a
single Address that identifies it.
Transaction: A piece of data, signed by an External Actor. It represents either a Message or a new Autonomous
Object. Transactions are recorded into each block of the blockchain.
Autonomous Object: A notional object existent only within the hypothetical state of Ethereum. Has an intrinsic
address and thus an associated account; the account will have non-empty associated EVM Code. Incorporated
only as the Storage State of that account.
Storage State: The information particular to a given Account that is maintained between the times that the
Account’s associated EVM Code runs.
Message: Data (as a set of bytes) and Value (specified as Ether) that is passed between two Accounts, either
through the deterministic operation of an Autonomous Object or the cryptographically secure signature of the
Transaction.
Message Call: The act of passing a message from one Account to another. If the destination account is associated
with non-empty EVM Code, then the VM will be started with the state of said Object and the Message acted
upon. If the message sender is an Autonomous Object, then the Call passes any data returned from the VM
operation.
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 18

Gas: The fundamental network cost unit. Paid for exclusively by Ether (as of PoC-4), which is converted freely to
and from Gas as required. Gas does not exist outside of the internal Ethereum computation engine; its price is
set by the Transaction and miners are free to ignore Transactions whose Gas price is too low.
Contract: Informal term used to mean both a piece of EVM Code that may be associated with an Account or an
Autonomous Object.
Object: Synonym for Autonomous Object.
App: An end-user-visible application hosted in the Ethereum Browser.
Ethereum Browser: (aka Ethereum Reference Client) A cross-platform GUI of an interface similar to a simplified
browser (a la Chrome) that is able to host sandboxed applications whose backend is purely on the Ethereum
protocol.
Ethereum Virtual Machine: (aka EVM) The virtual machine that forms the key part of the execution model
for an Account’s associated EVM Code.
Ethereum Runtime Environment: (aka ERE) The environment which is provided to an Autonomous Object
executing in the EVM. Includes the EVM but also the structure of the world state on which the EVM relies for
certain I/O instructions including CALL & CREATE.
EVM Code: The bytecode that the EVM can natively execute. Used to formally specify the meaning and
ramifications of a message to an Account.
EVM Assembly: The human-readable form of EVM-code.
LLL: The Lisp-like Low-level Language, a human-writable language used for authoring simple contracts and general
low-level language toolkit for trans-compiling to.

Appendix B. Recursive Length Prefix

This is a serialisation method for encoding arbitrarily structured binary data (byte arrays).
We define the set of possible structures T:
(179) T ≡ L]B
(180) L ≡ {t : t = (t[0], t[1], ...) ∧ ∀n < ktk : t[n] ∈ T}
(181) B ≡ {b : b = (b[0], b[1], ...) ∧ ∀n < kbk : b[n] ∈ O}
Where O is the set of (8-bit) bytes. Thus B is the set of all sequences of bytes (otherwise known as byte arrays, and
a leaf if imagined as a tree), L is the set of all tree-like (sub-)structures that are not a single leaf (a branch node if
imagined as a tree) and T is the set of all byte arrays and such structural sequences. The disjoint union ] is needed only
to distinguish the empty byte array () ∈ B from the empty list () ∈ L, which are encoded differently as defined below; as
common, we will abuse notation and leave the disjoint union indices implicit, inferable from context.
We define the RLP function as RLP through two sub-functions, the first handling the instance when the value is a byte
array, the second when it is a sequence of further values:
(
Rb (x) if x ∈ B
(182) RLP(x) ≡
Rl (x) otherwise
If the value to be serialised is a byte array, the RLP serialisation takes one of three forms:
• If the byte array contains solely a single byte and that single byte is less than 128, then the input is exactly equal
to the output.
• If the byte array contains fewer than 56 bytes, then the output is equal to the input prefixed by the byte equal to
the length of the byte array plus 128.
• Otherwise, the output is equal to the input, provided that it contains fewer than 264 bytes, prefixed by the
minimal-length byte array which when interpreted as a big-endian integer is equal to the length of the input byte
array, which is itself prefixed by the number of bytes required to faithfully encode this length value plus 183.
Byte arrays containing 264 or more bytes cannot be encoded. This restriction ensures that the first byte of the encoding
of a byte array is always below 192, and thus it can be readily distinguished from the encodings of sequences in L.
Formally, we define Rb :


 x if kxk = 1 ∧ x[0] < 128

(128 + kxk) · x else if kxk < 56
(183) Rb (x) ≡

 183 + BE(kxk) · BE(kxk) · x else if kxk < 264



∅ otherwise
kbk−1
X
(184) BE(x) ≡ (b0 , b1 , ...) : b0 6= 0 ∧ x = bn · 256kbk−1−n
n=0
(185) (x1 , ..., xn ) · (y1 , ..., ym ) = (x1 , ..., xn , y1 , ..., ym )
Thus BE is the function that expands a non-negative integer value to a big-endian byte array of minimal length and
the dot operator performs sequence concatenation.
If instead, the value to be serialised is a sequence of other items then the RLP serialisation takes one of two forms:
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 19

• If the concatenated serialisations of each contained item is less than 56 bytes in length, then the output is equal
to that concatenation prefixed by the byte equal to the length of this byte array plus 192.
• Otherwise, the output is equal to the concatenated serialisations, provided that they contain fewer than 264 bytes,
prefixed by the minimal-length byte array which when interpreted as a big-endian integer is equal to the length
of the concatenated serialisations byte array, which is itself prefixed by the number of bytes required to faithfully
encode this length value plus 247.
Sequences whose concatenated serialized items contain 264 or more bytes cannot be encoded. This restriction ensures
that the first byte of the encoding does not exceed 255 (otherwise it would not be a byte).
Thus we finish by formally defining Rl :

(192 + ks(x)k)


· s(x)


if s(x) 6= ∅ ∧ ks(x)k < 56
(186) Rl (x) ≡ 247 + BE(ks(x)k) · BE(ks(x)k) · s(x) else if s(x) 6= ∅ ∧ ks(x)k < 264

otherwise

∅
(
RLP(x[0]) · RLP(x[1]) · ... if ∀i : RLP(x[i]) 6= ∅
(187) s(x) ≡
∅ otherwise
If RLP is used to encode a scalar, defined only as a non-negative integer (in N, or in Nx for any x), it must be encoded
as the shortest byte array whose big-endian interpretation is the scalar. Thus the RLP of some non-negative integer i is
defined as:
(188) RLP(i : i ∈ N) ≡ RLP(BE(i))
When interpreting RLP data, if an expected fragment is decoded as a scalar and leading zeroes are found in the byte
sequence, clients are required to consider it non-canonical and treat it in the same manner as otherwise invalid RLP data,
dismissing it completely.
There is no specific canonical encoding format for signed or floating-point values.

Appendix C. Hex-Prefix Encoding

Hex-prefix encoding is an efficient method of encoding an arbitrary number of nibbles as a byte array. It is able to
store an additional flag which, when used in the context of the trie (the only context in which it is used), disambiguates
between node types.
It is defined as the function HP which maps from a sequence of nibbles (represented by the set Y) together with a
boolean value to a sequence of bytes (represented by the set B):
(
(16f (t), 16x[0] + x[1], 16x[2] + x[3], ...) if kxk is even
(189) HP(x, t) : x ∈ Y ≡
(16(f (t) + 1) + x[0], 16x[1] + x[2], 16x[3] + x[4], ...) otherwise
(
2 if t 6= 0
(190) f (t) ≡
0 otherwise
Thus the high nibble of the first byte contains two flags; the lowest bit encoding the oddness of the length and the
second-lowest encoding the flag t. The low nibble of the first byte is zero in the case of an even number of nibbles and the
first nibble in the case of an odd number. All remaining nibbles (now an even number) fit properly into the remaining
bytes.

Appendix D. Modified Merkle Patricia Tree

The modified Merkle Patricia tree (trie) provides a persistent data structure to map between arbitrary-length binary
data (byte arrays). It is defined in terms of a mutable data structure to map between 256-bit binary fragments and
arbitrary-length binary data, typically implemented as a database. The core of the trie, and its sole requirement in terms
of the protocol specification, is to provide a single value that identifies a given set of key-value pairs, which may be either
a 32-byte sequence or the empty byte sequence. It is left as an implementation consideration to store and maintain the
structure of the trie in a manner that allows effective and efficient realisation of the protocol.
Formally, we assume the input value I, a set containing pairs of byte sequences with unique keys:
(191) I = {(k0 ∈ B, v0 ∈ B), (k1 ∈ B, v1 ∈ B), ...}
When considering such a sequence, we use the common numeric subscript notation to refer to a tuple’s key or value,
thus:
(192) ∀I ∈ I : I ≡ (I0 , I1 )
Any series of bytes may also trivially be viewed as a series of nibbles, given an endian-specific notation; here we assume
big-endian. Thus:
(193) y(I) = {(k00 ∈ Y, v0 ∈ B), (k01 ∈ Y, v1 ∈ B), ...}
(
bkn [i ÷ 2] ÷ 16c if i is even
(194) ∀n : ∀i < 2kkn k : k0n [i] ≡
kn [bi ÷ 2c] mod 16 otherwise
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 20

We define the function TRIE, which evaluates to the root of the trie that represents this set when encoded in this
structure:

(195) TRIE(I) ≡ KEC(c(I, 0))

We also assume a function n, the trie’s node cap function. When composing a node, we use RLP to encode the
structure. As a means of reducing storage complexity, for nodes whose composed RLP is fewer than 32 bytes, we store
the RLP directly; for those larger we assert prescience of the byte array whose Keccak hash evaluates to our reference.
Thus we define in terms of c, the node composition function:

()
 if I = ∅
(196) n(I, i) ≡ c(I, i) if kc(I, i)k < 32

KEC(c(I, i)) otherwise


In a manner similar to a radix tree, when the trie is traversed from root to leaf, one may build a single key-value pair.
The key is accumulated through the traversal, acquiring a single nibble from each branch node (just as with a radix tree).
Unlike a radix tree, in the case of multiple keys sharing the same prefix or in the case of a single key having a unique
suffix, two optimising nodes are provided. Thus while traversing, one may potentially acquire multiple nibbles from each
of the other two node types, extension and leaf. There are three kinds of nodes in the trie:
Leaf: A two-item structure whose first item corresponds to the nibbles in the key not already accounted for by the
accumulation of keys and branches traversed from the root. The hex-prefix encoding method is used and the
second parameter to the function is required to be 1.
Extension: A two-item structure whose first item corresponds to a series of nibbles of size greater than one that
are shared by at least two distinct keys past the accumulation of the keys of nibbles and the keys of branches as
traversed from the root. The hex-prefix encoding method is used and the second parameter to the function is
required to be 0.
Branch: A 17-item structure whose first sixteen items correspond to each of the sixteen possible nibble values for
the keys at this point in their traversal. The 17th item is used in the case of this being a terminator node and
thus a key being ended at this point in its traversal.
A branch is then only used when necessary; no branch nodes may exist that contain only a single non-zero entry. We
may formally define this structure with the structural composition function c:
(197) 



 RLP HP(I0 [i..(kI0 k − 1)], 1), I1 if kIk = 1 where ∃I : I ∈ I

 

RLP HP(I0 [i..(j − 1)], 0), n(I, if i 6= j where j = max{x : ∃l : klk = x ∧ ∀I ∈ I : I0 [0..(x − 1)] = l}


 j)
c(I, i) ≡ RLP (u(0), u(1), ..., u(15), v)

 otherwise where u(j) ≡ n({I ( : I ∈ I ∧ I0 [i] = j}, i + 1)

I1 if ∃I : I ∈ I ∧ kI0 k = i




 v =
() otherwise


D.1. Trie Database. Thus no explicit assumptions are made concerning what data is stored and what is not, since
that is an implementation-specific consideration; we simply define the identity function mapping the key-value set I
to a 32-byte hash and assert that only a single such hash exists for any I, which though not strictly true is accurate
within acceptable precision given the Keccak hash’s collision resistance. In reality, a sensible implementation will not fully
recompute the trie root hash for each set.
A reasonable implementation will maintain a database of nodes determined from the computation of various tries or,
more formally, it will memoise the function c. This strategy uses the nature of the trie to both easily recall the contents of
any previous key-value set and to store multiple such sets in a very efficient manner. Due to the dependency relationship,
Merkle-proofs may be constructed with an O(log N ) space requirement that can demonstrate a particular leaf must exist
within a trie of a given root hash.

Appendix E. Precompiled Contracts

For each precompiled contract, we make use of a template function, ΞPRE , which implements the out-of-gas checking.
(
(∅, 0, A0 , ()) if g < gr
(198) ΞPRE (σ, g, I, T ) ≡
(σ, g − gr , A0 , o) otherwise

The precompiled contracts each use these definitions and provide specifications for the o (the output data) and gr , the
gas requirements.
We define ΞECREC as a precompiled contract for the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) public key
recovery function (ecrecover). See Appendix F for the definition of the function ECDSARECOVER. We also define d to be
the input data, well-defined for an infinite length by appending zeroes as required. In the case of an invalid signature
(ECDSARECOVER(h, v, r, s) = ∅), we return no output.
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 21

(199) ΞECREC ≡ ΞPRE where:

(200) gr = 3000
(
0 if ECDSARECOVER(h, v, r, s) = ∅
(201) kok =
32 otherwise
(202) if kok = 32 :
(203) o[0..11] = 0


(204) o[12..31] = KEC ECDSARECOVER(h, v, r, s) [12..31] where:
(205) d[0..(kId k − 1)] = Id
(206) d[kId k..] = (0, 0, ...)
(207) h = d[0..31]
(208) v = d[32..63]
(209) r = d[64..95]
(210) s = d[96..127]

We define ΞSHA256 and ΞRIP160 as precompiled contracts implementing the SHA2-256 and RIPEMD-160 hash functions
respectively. Their gas usage is dependent on the input data size, a factor rounded up to the nearest number of words.

(211) ΞSHA256 ≡ ΞPRE where:

l kI k m
d
(212) gr = 60 + 12
32
(213) o[0..31] = SHA256(Id )
(214) ΞRIP160 ≡ ΞPRE where:
l kI k m
d
(215) gr = 600 + 120
32
(216) o[0..11] = 0
(217) o[12..31] = RIPEMD160(Id )

For the purposes here, we assume we have well-defined standard cryptographic functions for RIPEMD-160 and
SHA2-256 of the form:

(218) SHA256(i ∈ B) ≡ o ∈ B32

(219) RIPEMD160(i ∈ B) ≡ o ∈ B20

The fourth contract, the identity function ΞID simply defines the output as the input:

(220) ΞID ≡ ΞPRE where:

l kI k m
d
(221) gr = 15 + 3
32
(222) o = Id

The fifth contract performs arbitrary-precision exponentiation under modulo. Here, 00 is taken to be one, and x mod 0
is zero for all x. The first word in the input specifies the number of bytes that the first non-negative integer B occupies.
The second word in the input specifies the number of bytes that the second non-negative integer E occupies. The third
word in the input specifies the number of bytes that the third non-negative integer M occupies. These three words are
followed by B, E and M . The rest of the input is discarded. Whenever the input is too short, the missing bytes are
considered to be zero. The output is encoded big-endian into the same format as M ’s.
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 22

(223) ΞEXPMOD ≡ ΞPRE except:

$ %
f max(`M , `B ) max(`0E , 1)


(224) gr =
Gquaddivisor


 x2 if x ≤ 64

  2
 x


(225) f (x) ≡ + 96x − 3072 if 64 < x ≤ 1024
 4
  2
x


+ 480x − 199680 otherwise



16


 0 if `E ≤ 32 ∧ E = 0

blog (E)c if `E ≤ 32 ∧ E 6= 0
(226) `0E = 2

 8(` E − 32) + blog2 (i[(96 + `B )..(127 + `B )])c if 32 < `E ∧ i[(96 + `B )..(127 + `B )] 6= 0

8(`E − 32)

otherwise
 
(227) o = B E mod M ∈ N8`M
(228) `B ≡ i[0..31]
(229) `E ≡ i[32..63]
(230) `M ≡ i[64..95]
(231) B ≡ i[96..(95 + `B )]
(232) E ≡ i[(96 + `B )..(95 + `B + `E )]
(233) M ≡ i[(96 + `B + `E )..(95 + `B + `E + `M )]
(
Id [x] if x < kId k
(234) i[x] ≡
0 otherwise

E.1. zkSNARK Related Precompiled Contracts. We choose two numbers, both of which are prime.
(235) p ≡ 21888242871839275222246405745257275088696311157297823662689037894645226208583
(236) q ≡ 21888242871839275222246405745257275088548364400416034343698204186575808495617
Since p is a prime number, {0, 1, . . . , p − 1} forms a field with addition and multiplication modulo p. We call this field Fp .
We define a set C1 with
(237) C1 ≡ {(X, Y ) ∈ Fp × Fp | Y 2 = X 3 + 3} ∪ {(0, 0)}
We define a binary operation + on C1 for distinct elements (X1 , Y1 ), (X2 , Y2 ) with
(
(X, Y ) if X1 6= X2
(238) (X1 , Y1 ) + (X2 , Y2 ) ≡
(0, 0) otherwise
Y2 − Y1
λ ≡
X2 − X1
X ≡ λ2 − X1 − X2
Y ≡ λ(X1 − X) − Y1
In the case where (X1 , Y1 ) = (X2 , Y2 ), we define + on C1 with
(
(X, Y ) if Y1 6= 0
(239) (X1 , Y1 ) + (X2 , Y2 ) ≡
(0, 0) otherwise
3X12
λ ≡
2Y1
X ≡ λ2 − 2X1
Y ≡ λ(X1 − X) − Y1
(C1 , +) is known to form a group. We define scalar multiplication · with
(240) n · P ≡ (0, 0) + P + · · · + P
| {z }
n

for a natural number n and a point P in C1 .

We define P1 to be a point (1, 2) on C1 . Let G1 be the subgroup of (C1 , +) generated by P1 . G1 is known to be a
cyclic group of order q. For a point P in G1 , we define logP1 (P ) to be the smallest natural number n satisfying n · P1 = P .
logP1 (P ) is at most q − 1.
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 23

Let Fp2 be a field Fp [i]/(i2 + 1). We define a set C2 with

(241) C2 ≡ {(X, Y ) ∈ Fp2 × Fp2 | Y 2 = X 3 + 3(i + 9)−1 } ∪ {(0, 0)}

We define a binary operation + and scalar multiplication · with the same equations (238), (239) and (240). (C2 , +) is also
known to be a group. We define P2 in C2 with

(242) P2 ≡ (11559732032986387107991004021392285783925812861821192530917403151452391805634 × i
+10857046999023057135944570762232829481370756359578518086990519993285655852781,
4082367875863433681332203403145435568316851327593401208105741076214120093531 × i
+8495653923123431417604973247489272438418190587263600148770280649306958101930)

We define G2 to be the subgroup of (C2 , +) generated by P2 . G2 is known to be the only cyclic group of order q on C2 .
For a point P in G2 , we define logP2 (P ) be the smallest natural number n satisfying n · P2 = P . With this definition,
logP2 (P ) is at most q − 1.
Let GT be the multiplicative abelian group underlying Fq12 . It is known that a non-degenerate bilinear map
e : G1 × G2 → GT exists. This bilinear map is a type three pairing. There are several such bilinear maps, it does not
matter which is chosen to be e. Let PT = e(P1 , P2 ), a be a set of k points in G1 , and b be a set of k points in G2 . It
follows from the definition of a pairing that the following are equivalent

(243) logP1 (a1 ) × logP2 (b1 ) + · · · + logP1 (ak ) × logP2 (bk ) ≡ 1 mod q
k
Y
(244) e (ai , bi ) = PT
i=0

Thus the pairing operation provides a method to verify (243).

A 32 byte number x ∈ P256 might and might not represent an element of Fp .

(
x if x < p
(245) δp (x) ≡
∅ otherwise

A 64 byte data x ∈ B512 might and might not represent an element of G1 .

(
g1 if g1 ∈ G1
(246) δ1 (x) ≡
∅ otherwise
(
(x, y) if x 6= ∅ ∧ y 6= ∅
(247) g1 ≡
∅ otherwise
(248) x ≡ δp (x[0..31])
(249) y ≡ δp (x[32..63])

A 128 byte data x ∈ B1024 might and might not represent an element of G2 .

(
g2 if g2 ∈ G2
(250) δ2 (x) ≡
∅ otherwise
(
((x0 i + y0 ), (x1 i + y1 )) if x0 6= ∅ ∧ y0 6= ∅ ∧ x1 6= ∅ ∧ y1 6= ∅
(251) g2 ≡
∅ otherwise
(252) x0 ≡ δp (x[0..31])
(253) y0 ≡ δp (x[32..63])
(254) x1 ≡ δp (x[64..95])
(255) y1 ≡ δp (x[96..127])

We define ΞSNARKV as a precompiled contract which checks if (243) holds, for intended use in zkSNARK verification.
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 24

(256) ΞSNARKV ≡ ΞPRE except:

∅, 0, A0 , ()


(257) ΞSNARKV (σ, g, I) = if F
(258) F ≡ (kId k mod 192 6= 0 ∨ (∃j. aj = ∅ ∨ bj = ∅))
kId k
(259) k =
192
(260) gr = 34000k + 45000
(
0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 if v ∧ ¬F
(261) o[0..31] ≡
0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 if ¬v ∧ ¬F
(262) v ≡ (logP1 (a1 ) × logP2 (b1 ) + · · · + logP1 (ak ) × logP2 (bk ) ≡ 1 mod q)
(263) a1 ≡ δ1 (Id [0..63])
(264) b1 ≡ δ2 (Id [64..191])
..
.
(265) ak ≡ δ1 (Id [(kId k − 192)..(kId k − 129)])
(266) bk ≡ δ2 (Id [(kId k − 128)..(kId k − 1)])
We define a precompiled contract for addition on G1 .

(267) ΞBN ADD ≡ ΞBN PRE except:

∅, 0, A0 , ()


(268) ΞBN ADD (σ, g, I) = if x = ∅ ∨ y = ∅
(269) gr = 150
(270) o ≡ δ1−1 (x + y) where + is the group operation in G1
δ1 I¯d [0..63]


(271) x ≡
δ1 I¯d [64..127]


(272) y ≡
(
Id [x] if x < kId k
(273) I¯d [x] ≡
0 otherwise
We define a precompiled contract for scalar multiplication on G1 , where I¯d is defined in (273).
(274) ΞBN MUL ≡ ΞPRE except:
∅, 0, A0 , ()


(275) ΞBN MUL (σ, g, I) = if x = ∅
(276) gr = 6000
(277) o ≡ δ1−1 (n · x) where · is the scalar multiplication in G1
δ1 I¯d [0..63]


(278) x ≡
(279) n ≡ I¯d [64..95]
E.2. BLAKE2 Precompiled Contract. EIP-152 by Hess et al. [2016] defines ΞBLAKE2 F as a precompiled contract
implementing the compression function F used in the BLAKE2 cryptographic hashing algorithm. The F compression
function is specified in RFC 7693 by Saarinen and Aumasson [2015].
(280) ΞBLAKE2 F ≡ ΞPRE except:
∅, 0, A0 , ()


(281) ΞBLAKE2 F (σ, g, I) = if kId k =
6 213 ∨ f ∈
/ {0, 1}
(282) gr = r
(283) o ≡ LE8 (h00 ) · ... · LE8 (h07 )
(284) (h00 , . . . , h07 ) ≡ F(h, m, tlow , thigh , f ) with r rounds and w = 64
(285) BE4 (r) ≡ Id [0..4]
(286) LE8 (h0 ) ≡ Id [4..12]
(287) ...
(288) LE8 (h7 ) ≡ Id [60..68]
(289) LE8 (m0 ) ≡ Id [68..76]
(290) ...
(291) LE8 (m15 ) ≡ Id [188..196]
(292) LE8 (tlow ) ≡ Id [196..204]
(293) LE8 (thigh ) ≡ Id [204..212]
(294) f ≡ Id [212]
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 25

where r ∈ B32 , ∀i ∈ 0..7 : hi ∈ B64 , ∀i ∈ 0..15 : mi ∈ B64 , tlow ∈ B64 , thigh ∈ B64 , f ∈ B8 , BEk is the k-byte big-endian
representation—compare with(184):
k−1
X
(295) BEk (x) ≡ (b0 , b1 , ..., bk−1 ) : x = bn · 256k−1−n
n=0

and LEk is the k-byte little-endian representation:

k−1
X
(296) LEk (x) ≡ (b0 , b1 , ..., bk−1 ) : x = bn · 256n
n=0

Appendix F. Signing Transactions

Transactions are signed using recoverable ECDSA signatures. This method utilises the SECP-256k1 curve as described
by Courtois et al. [2014], and is implemented similarly to as described by Gura et al. [2004] on p. 9 of 15, para. 3.
It is assumed that the sender has a valid private key pr , which is a randomly selected positive integer (represented as a
byte array of length 32 in big-endian form) in the range [1, secp256k1n − 1].
We assume the existence of functions ECDSAPUBKEY, ECDSASIGN and ECDSARECOVER. These are formally defined in the
literature, e.g. by Johnson et al. [2001].
(297) ECDSAPUBKEY(pr ∈ B32 ) ≡ pu ∈ B64
(298) ECDSASIGN(e ∈ B32 , pr ∈ B32 ) ≡ (v ∈ B1 , r ∈ B32 , s ∈ B32 )
(299) ECDSARECOVER(e ∈ B32 , v ∈ B1 , r ∈ B32 , s ∈ B32 ) ≡ pu ∈ B64
Where pu is the public key, assumed to be a byte array of size 64 (formed from the concatenation of two positive
integers each < 2256 ), pr is the private key, a byte array of size 32 (or a single positive integer in the aforementioned
range) and e is the hash of the transaction, h(T ). It is assumed that v is the ‘recovery identifier’. The recovery identifier
is a 1 byte value specifying the parity and finiteness of the coordinates of the curve point for which r is the x-value; this
value is in the range of [27, 30], however we declare the upper two possibilities, representing infinite values, invalid. The
value 27 represents an even y value and 28 represents an odd y value.
We declare that an ECDSA signature is invalid unless all the following conditions are true5:
(300) 0 < r < secp256k1n
(301) 0 < s < secp256k1n ÷ 2 + 1
(302) v ∈ {27, 28}
where:
(303) secp256k1n = 115792089237316195423570985008687907852837564279074904382605163141518161494337
For a given private key, pr , the Ethereum address A(pr ) (a 160-bit value) to which it corresponds is defined as the
rightmost 160-bits of the Keccak hash of the corresponding ECDSA public key:



(304) A(pr ) = B96..255 KEC ECDSAPUBKEY(pr )
The message hash, h(T ), to be signed is the Keccak hash of the transaction. Two different flavors of signing schemes
are available. One operates without the latter three signature components, formally described as Tr , Ts and Tw . The
other operates on nine elements:
(
(Tn , Tp , Tg , Tt , Tv , p) if v ∈ {27, 28}
(305) LS (T ) ≡
(Tn , Tp , Tg , Tt , Tv , p, β, (), ()) otherwise
where (
Ti if Tt = 0
p ≡
Td otherwise
(306) h(T ) ≡ KEC(LS (T ))
The signed transaction G(T, pr ) is defined as:
(307) G(T, pr ) ≡ T except:
(308) (Tw , Tr , Ts ) = ECDSASIGN(h(T ), pr )
Reiterating from previously:
(309) Tr = r
(310) Ts = s
Tw is either the recovery identifier or ‘chain identifier β doubled plus 35 or 36’. In the second case, where v is the chain
identifier β doubled plus 35 or 36, the values 35 and 36 assume the role of the ‘recovery identifier’ by specifying the parity
of y, with the value 35 representing an even value and 36 representing an odd value.
5A signature of a transaction can be valid not only with a recovery identifier but with some other numbers. See how the component T
w
of a transaction is interpreted.
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 26

We may then define the sender function S of the transaction as:

(311) S(T ) ≡ B96..255 KEC ECDSARECOVER(h(T ), v0 , Tr , Ts )
(
Tw if Tw ∈ {27, 28}
(312) v0 ≡
28 − (Tw mod 2) otherwise

The assertion that the sender of a signed transaction equals the address of the signer should be self-evident:

(313) ∀T : ∀pr : S(G(T, pr )) ≡ A(pr )

Appendix G. Fee Schedule

The fee schedule G is a tuple of scalar values corresponding to the relative costs, in gas, of a number of abstract
operations that a transaction may effect.
Name Value Description
Gzero 0 Nothing paid for operations of the set Wzero .
Gjumpdest 1 Amount of gas to pay for a JUMPDEST operation.
Gbase 2 Amount of gas to pay for operations of the set Wbase .
Gverylow 3 Amount of gas to pay for operations of the set Wverylow .
Glow 5 Amount of gas to pay for operations of the set Wlow .
Gmid 8 Amount of gas to pay for operations of the set Wmid .
Ghigh 10 Amount of gas to pay for operations of the set Whigh .
Gextcode 700 Amount of gas to pay for operations of the set Wextcode .
Gbalance 700 Amount of gas to pay for a BALANCE operation.
Gsload 800 Paid for an SLOAD operation.
Gsset 20000 Paid for an SSTORE operation when the storage value is set to non-zero from zero.
Gsreset 5000 Paid for an SSTORE operation when the storage value’s zeroness remains unchanged or
is set to zero.
Rsclear 15000 Refund given (added into refund counter) when the storage value is set to zero from
non-zero.
Rself destruct 24000 Refund given (added into refund counter) for self-destructing an account.
Gself destruct 5000 Amount of gas to pay for a SELFDESTRUCT operation.
Gcreate 32000 Paid for a CREATE operation.
Gcodedeposit 200 Paid per byte for a CREATE operation to succeed in placing code into state.
Gcall 700 Paid for a CALL operation.
Gcallvalue 9000 Paid for a non-zero value transfer as part of the CALL operation.
Gcallstipend 2300 A stipend for the called contract subtracted from Gcallvalue for a non-zero value transfer.
Gnewaccount 25000 Paid for a CALL or SELFDESTRUCT operation which creates an account.
Gexp 10 Partial payment for an EXP operation.
Gexpbyte 50 Partial payment when multiplied by the number of bytes in the exponent for the EXP operation.
Gmemory 3 Paid for every additional word when expanding memory.
Gtxcreate 32000 Paid by all contract-creating transactions after the Homestead transition.
Gtxdatazero 4 Paid for every zero byte of data or code for a transaction.
Gtxdatanonzero 16 Paid for every non-zero byte of data or code for a transaction.
Gtransaction 21000 Paid for every transaction.
Glog 375 Partial payment for a LOG operation.
Glogdata 8 Paid for each byte in a LOG operation’s data.
Glogtopic 375 Paid for each topic of a LOG operation.
Gsha3 30 Paid for each SHA3 operation.
Gsha3word 6 Paid for each word (rounded up) for input data to a SHA3 operation.
Gcopy 3 Partial payment for *COPY operations, multiplied by words copied, rounded up.
Gblockhash 20 Payment for BLOCKHASH operation.
Gquaddivisor 20 The quadratic coefficient of the input sizes of the exponentiation-over-modulo precompiled
contract.

Appendix H. Virtual Machine Specification

When interpreting 256-bit binary values as integers, the representation is big-endian.
When a 256-bit machine datum is converted to and from a 160-bit address or hash, the rightwards (low-order for BE)
20 bytes are used and the leftmost 12 are discarded or filled with zeroes, thus the integer values (when the bytes are
interpreted as big-endian) are equivalent.
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 27

H.1. Gas Cost. The general gas cost function, C, is defined as:


CSSTORE (σ, µ)


if w = SSTORE
Gexp if w = EXP ∧ µs [1] = 0








 Gexp + Gexpbyte × (1 + blog256 (µs [1])c) if w = EXP ∧ µs [1] > 0

Gverylow + Gcopy × dµs [2] ÷ 32e if w ∈ Wcopy








 Gextcode + Gcopy × dµs [3] ÷ 32e if w = EXTCODECOPY
∈ Wextcode



 Gextcode if w

Glog + Glogdata × µs [1]


 if w = LOG0

Glog + Glogdata × µs [1] + Glogtopic if w = LOG1




Glog + Glogdata × µs [1] + 2Glogtopic if w = LOG2





Glog + Glogdata × µs [1] + 3Glogtopic if w = LOG3





Glog + Glogdata × µs [1] + 4Glogtopic if w = LOG4





CCALL (σ, µ)


 if w ∈ Wcall

C
0 SELFDESTRUCT (σ, µ) if w = SELFDESTRUCT
(314) C(σ, µ, I) ≡ Cmem (µi ) − Cmem (µi ) +


 Gcreate if w = CREATE
Gcreate + Gsha3word × dµs [2] ÷ 32e


 if w = CREATE2

Gsha3 + Gsha3word × dµs [1] ÷ 32e



 if w = SHA3

Gjumpdest if w = JUMPDEST




Gsload if w = SLOAD





Gzero if w ∈ Wzero




Gbase if w ∈ Wbase








 Gverylow if w ∈ Wverylow

Glow


 if w ∈ Wlow




 Gmid if w ∈ Wmid
∈ Whigh



Ghigh if w


Gbalance

 if w = BALANCE

Gblockhash if w = BLOCKHASH


(
Ib [µpc ] if µpc < kIb k
(315) w≡
STOP otherwise
where:
a2
 
(316) Cmem (a) ≡ Gmemory · a +
512
with CCALL , CSELFDESTRUCT and CSSTORE as specified in the appropriate section below. We define the following subsets
of instructions:
Wzero = {STOP, RETURN, REVERT}
Wbase = {ADDRESS, ORIGIN, CALLER, CALLVALUE, CALLDATASIZE, CODESIZE, GASPRICE, COINBASE,
TIMESTAMP, NUMBER, DIFFICULTY, GASLIMIT, CHAINID, RETURNDATASIZE, POP, PC, MSIZE, GAS}
Wverylow = {ADD, SUB, NOT, LT, GT, SLT, SGT, EQ, ISZERO, AND, OR, XOR, BYTE, SHL, SHR, SAR,
CALLDATALOAD, MLOAD, MSTORE, MSTORE8, PUSH*, DUP*, SWAP*}
Wlow = {MUL, DIV, SDIV, MOD, SMOD, SIGNEXTEND, SELFBALANCE}
Wmid = {ADDMOD, MULMOD, JUMP}
Whigh = {JUMPI}
Wcopy = {CALLDATACOPY, CODECOPY, RETURNDATACOPY}
Wcall = {CALL, CALLCODE, DELEGATECALL, STATICCALL}
Wextcode = {EXTCODESIZE, EXTCODEHASH}
Note the memory cost component, given as the product of Gmemory and the maximum of 0 & the ceiling of the number
of words in size that the memory must be over the current number of words, µi in order that all accesses reference valid
memory whether for read or write. Such accesses must be for non-zero number of bytes.
Referencing a zero length range (e.g. by attempting to pass it as the input range to a CALL) does not require memory
to be extended to the beginning of the range. µ0i is defined as this new maximum number of words of active memory;
special-cases are given where these two are not equal.
Note also that Cmem is the memory cost function (the expansion function being the difference between the cost before
and after). It is a polynomial, with the higher-order coefficient divided and floored, and thus linear up to 724B of memory
used, after which it costs substantially more.
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 28

While defining the instruction set, we defined the memory-expansion for range function, M , thus:

(
s if l = 0
(317) M (s, f, l) ≡
max(s, d(f + l) ÷ 32e) otherwise

Another useful function is “all but one 64th” function L defined as:

(318) L(n) ≡ n − bn/64c

H.2. Instruction Set. As previously specified in section 9, these definitions take place in the final context there. In
particular we assume O is the EVM state-progression function and define the terms pertaining to the next cycle’s state
(σ 0 , µ0 ) such that:

(319) O(σ, µ, A, I) ≡ (σ 0 , µ0 , A0 , I) with exceptions, as noted

Here given are the various exceptions to the state transition rules given in section 9 specified for each instruction,
together with the additional instruction-specific definitions of J and C. For each instruction, also specified is α, the
additional items placed on the stack and δ, the items removed from stack, as defined in section 9.
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 29

0s: Stop and Arithmetic Operations

All arithmetic is modulo 2256 unless otherwise noted. The zero-th power of zero 00 is defined to be one.
Value Mnemonic δ α Description
0x00 STOP 0 0 Halts execution.
0x01 ADD 2 1 Addition operation.
µ0s [0] ≡ µs [0] + µs [1]
0x02 MUL 2 1 Multiplication operation.
µ0s [0] ≡ µs [0] × µs [1]
0x03 SUB 2 1 Subtraction operation.
µ0s [0] ≡ µs [0] − µs [1]
0x04 DIV 2 1 Integer division
( operation.
0 if µs [1] = 0
µ0s [0] ≡
bµs [0] ÷ µs [1]c otherwise
0x05 SDIV 2 1 Signed integer
 division operation (truncated).
0
 if µs [1] = 0
µ0s [0] ≡ −2255 if µs [0] = −2255 ∧ µs [1] = −1

sgn(µs [0] ÷ µs [1])b|µs [0] ÷ µs [1]|c otherwise

Where all values are treated as two’s complement signed 256-bit integers.
Note the overflow semantic when −2255 is negated.
0x06 MOD 2 1 Modulo ( remainder operation.
0 0 if µs [1] = 0
µs [0] ≡
µs [0] mod µs [1] otherwise
0x07 SMOD 2 1 Signed modulo
( remainder operation.
0 if µs [1] = 0
µ0s [0] ≡
sgn(µs [0])(|µs [0]| mod |µs [1]|) otherwise
Where all values are treated as two’s complement signed 256-bit integers.
0x08 ADDMOD 3 1 Modulo ( addition operation.
0 0 if µs [2] = 0
µs [0] ≡
(µs [0] + µs [1]) mod µs [2] otherwise
All intermediate calculations of this operation are not subject to the 2256
modulo.
0x09 MULMOD 3 1 Modulo ( multiplication operation.
0 0 if µs [2] = 0
µs [0] ≡
(µs [0] × µs [1]) mod µs [2] otherwise
All intermediate calculations of this operation are not subject to the 2256
modulo.
0x0a EXP 2 1 Exponential operation.
µ0s [0] ≡ µs [0]µs [1]
0x0b SIGNEXTEND 2 1 Extend length of two’s(complement signed integer.
µs [1]t if i 6 t where t = 256 − 8(µs [0] + 1)
∀i ∈ [0..255] : µ0s [0]i ≡
µs [1]i otherwise
µs [x]i gives the ith bit (counting from zero) of µs [x]
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 30

10s: Comparison & Bitwise Logic Operations

Value Mnemonic δ α Description
0x10 LT 2 1 Less-than ( comparison.
1 if µs [0] < µs [1]
µ0s [0] ≡
0 otherwise
0x11 GT 2 1 Greater-than
( comparison.
1 if µs [0] > µs [1]
µ0s [0] ≡
0 otherwise
0x12 SLT 2 1 Signed less-than
( comparison.
1 if µs [0] < µs [1]
µ0s [0] ≡
0 otherwise
Where all values are treated as two’s complement signed 256-bit integers.
0x13 SGT 2 1 Signed greater-than
( comparison.
1 if µ [0] > µs [1]
µ0s [0] ≡ s
0 otherwise
Where all values are treated as two’s complement signed 256-bit integers.
0x14 EQ 2 1 Equality(comparison.
1 if µs [0] = µs [1]
µ0s [0] ≡
0 otherwise
0x15 ISZERO 1 1 Simple not
( operator.
0 1 if µs [0] = 0
µs [0] ≡
0 otherwise
0x16 AND 2 1 Bitwise AND operation.
∀i ∈ [0..255] : µ0s [0]i ≡ µs [0]i ∧ µs [1]i
0x17 OR 2 1 Bitwise OR operation.
∀i ∈ [0..255] : µ0s [0]i ≡ µs [0]i ∨ µs [1]i
0x18 XOR 2 1 Bitwise XOR operation.
∀i ∈ [0..255] : µ0s [0]i ≡ µs [0]i ⊕ µs [1]i
0x19 NOT 1 1 Bitwise NOT operation.
(
1 if µs [0]i = 0
∀i ∈ [0..255] : µ0s [0]i ≡
0 otherwise
0x1a BYTE 2 1 Retrieve single byte from ( word.
0 µs [1](i+8µs [0]) if i < 8 ∧ µs [0] < 32
∀i ∈ [0..255] : µs [0]i ≡
0 otherwise
For the Nth byte, we count from the left (i.e. N=0 would be the most significant
in big endian).
0x1b SHL 2 1 Left shift operation.
µ0s [0] ≡ (µs [1] × 2µs [0] ) mod 2256
0x1c SHR 2 1 Logical right shift operation.
µ0s [0] ≡ bµs [1] ÷ 2µs [0] c
0x1d SAR 2 1 Arithmetic (signed) right shift operation.
µ0s [0] ≡ bµs [1] ÷ 2µs [0] c
Where µ0s [0] and µs [1] are treated as two’s complement signed 256-bit integers,
while µs [0] is treated as unsigned.
20s: SHA3
Value Mnemonic δ α Description
0x20 SHA3 2 1 Compute Keccak-256 hash.
µ0s [0] ≡ KEC(µm [µs [0] . . . (µs [0] + µs [1] − 1)])
µ0i ≡ M (µi , µs [0], µs [1])
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 31

30s: Environmental Information

Value Mnemonic δ α Description
0x30 ADDRESS 0 1 Get address of currently executing account.
µ0s [0] ≡ Ia
0x31 BALANCE 1 1 Get balance
( of the given account.
σ[µs [0]]b if σ[µs [0] mod 2160 ] 6= ∅
µ0s [0] ≡
0 otherwise
0x32 ORIGIN 0 1 Get execution origination address.
µ0s [0] ≡ Io
This is the sender of original transaction; it is never an account with
non-empty associated code.
0x33 CALLER 0 1 Get caller address.
µ0s [0] ≡ Is
This is the address of the account that is directly responsible for
this execution.
0x34 CALLVALUE 0 1 Get deposited value by the instruction/transaction responsible for
this execution.
µ0s [0] ≡ Iv
0x35 CALLDATALOAD 1 1 Get input data of current environment.
µ0s [0] ≡ Id [µs [0] . . . (µs [0] + 31)] with Id [x] = 0 if x > kId k
This pertains to the input data passed with the message call
instruction or transaction.
0x36 CALLDATASIZE 0 1 Get size of input data in current
environment.
µ0s [0] ≡ kId k
This pertains to the input data passed with the message call
instruction or transaction.
0x37 CALLDATACOPY 3 0 Copy input data in current environment ( to memory.
Id [µs [1] + i] if µs [1] + i < kId k
∀i ∈ {0 . . . µs [2] − 1} : µ0m [µs [0] + i] ≡
0 otherwise
The additions in µs [1] + i are not subject to the 2256 modulo.
µ0i ≡ M (µi , µs [0], µs [2])
This pertains to the input data passed with the message call instruction
or transaction.
0x38 CODESIZE 0 1 Get size of code running in current environment.
µ0s [0] ≡ kIb k
0x39 CODECOPY 3 0 Copy code running in current environment ( to memory.
Ib [µs [1] + i] if µs [1] + i < kIb k
∀i ∈ {0 . . . µs [2] − 1} : µ0m [µs [0] + i] ≡
STOP otherwise
µ0i ≡ M (µi , µs [0], µs [2])
The additions in µs [1] + i are not subject to the 2256 modulo.
0x3a GASPRICE 0 1 Get price of gas in current environment.
µ0s [0] ≡ Ip
This is gas price specified by the originating transaction.
0x3b EXTCODESIZE 1 1 Get size of an account’s code.
µ0s [0] ≡ kbk
where KEC(b) ≡ σ[µs [0] mod 2160 ]c
0x3c EXTCODECOPY 4 0 Copy an account’s code to memory. (
b[µs [2] + i] if µs [2] + i < kbk
∀i ∈ {0 . . . µs [3] − 1} : µ0m [µs [1] + i] ≡
STOP otherwise
where KEC(b) ≡ σ[µs [0] mod 2160 ]c
µ0i ≡ M (µi , µs [1], µs [3])
The additions in µs [2] + i are not subject to the 2256 modulo.
0x3d RETURNDATASIZE 0 1 Get size of output data from the previous call from the current
environment.
µ0s [0] ≡ kµo k
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 32

0x3e RETURNDATACOPY 3 0 Copy output data from the previous call ( to memory.
µo [µs [1] + i] if µs [1] + i < kµo k
∀i ∈ {0 . . . µs [2] − 1} : µ0m [µs [0] + i] ≡
0 otherwise
The additions in µs [1] + i are not subject to the 2256 modulo.
µ0i ≡ M (µi , µs [0], µs [2])
0x3f EXTCODEHASH 1 1 Get hash(of an account’s code.
0 if DEAD(σ, µs [0] mod 2160 )
µ0s [0] ≡ 160
σ[µs [0] mod 2 ]c otherwise

40s: Block Information

Value Mnemonic δ α Description
0x40 BLOCKHASH 1 1 Get the hash of one of the 256 most recent complete blocks.
µ0s [0] ≡ P (IHp , µs [0], 0)
where P is the hash of a block of a particular number, up to a maximum
age. 0 is left on the stack if the looked for block number is greater than or
equal to the  current block number or more than 256 blocks behind the current block.
0
 if n > Hi ∨ a = 256 ∨ h = 0
P (h, n, a) ≡ h if n = Hi

P (Hp , n, a + 1) otherwise

and we assert the header H can be determined from its hash h unless h is zero
(as is the case for the parent hash of the genesis block).
0x41 COINBASE 0 1 Get the current block’s beneficiary address.
µ0s [0] ≡ IH c
0x42 TIMESTAMP 0 1 Get the current block’s timestamp.
µ0s [0] ≡ IH s
0x43 NUMBER 0 1 Get the current block’s number.
µ0s [0] ≡ IH i
0x44 DIFFICULTY 0 1 Get the current block’s difficulty.
µ0s [0] ≡ IH d
0x45 GASLIMIT 0 1 Get the current block’s gas limit.
µ0s [0] ≡ IH l
0x46 CHAINID 0 1 Get the chain ID.
µ0s [0] ≡ β
0x47 SELFBALANCE 0 1 Get balance of currently executing account.
µ0s [0] ≡ σ[Ia ]b
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 33

50s: Stack, Memory, Storage and Flow Operations

Value Mnemonic δ α Description
0x50 POP 1 0 Remove item from stack.
0x51 MLOAD 1 1 Load word from memory.
µ0s [0] ≡ µm [µs [0] . . . (µs [0] + 31)]
µ0i ≡ max(µi , d(µs [0] + 32) ÷ 32e)
The addition in the calculation of µ0i is not subject to the 2256 modulo.
0x52 MSTORE 2 0 Save word to memory.
µ0m [µs [0] . . . (µs [0] + 31)] ≡ µs [1]
µ0i ≡ max(µi , d(µs [0] + 32) ÷ 32e)
The addition in the calculation of µ0i is not subject to the 2256 modulo.
0x53 MSTORE8 2 0 Save byte to memory.
µ0m [µs [0]] ≡ (µs [1] mod 256)
µ0i ≡ max(µi , d(µs [0] + 1) ÷ 32e)
The addition in the calculation of µ0i is not subject to the 2256 modulo.
0x54 SLOAD 1 1 Load word from storage.
µ0s [0] ≡ σ[Ia ]s [µs [0]]
0x55 SSTORE 2 0 Save word to storage.
σ 0 [Ia ]s [µs [0]] ≡ µs [1]
CSSTORE (σ, µ) and A0r are specified by EIP-2200 as follows.
The checkpoint (“original”) state σ 0 is the state if the current transaction were to revert.
Let v0 = σ 0 [Ia ]s [µs [0]] be the original value of the storage slot.
Let v = σ[Ia ]s [µs [0]] be the current value.
Let v 0 = µs [1] be the new value.
Then: 
0
Gsload if v = v ∨ v0 6= v

0
CSSTORE (σ, µ) ≡ Gsset if v 6= v ∧ v0 = v ∧ v0 = 0
Gsreset if v 6= v 0 ∧ v0 = v ∧ v0 6= 0



Rsclear
 if v 6= v 0 ∧ v0 = v ∧ v 0 = 0
A0r ≡ Ar + rdirtyclear + rdirtyreset if v 6= v 0 ∧ v0 6= v

0 otherwise



 −R sclear if v0 6
= 0 ∧ v=0
rdirtyclear ≡ Rsclear if v0 6= 0 ∧ v 0 = 0

0 otherwise



 G sset − G sload if v0 = v 0 ∧ v0 = 0
rdirtyreset ≡ Gsreset − Gsload if v0 = v 0 ∧ v0 6= 0

0 otherwise


0x56 JUMP 1 0 Alter the program counter.

JJUMP (µ) ≡ µs [0]
This has the effect of writing said value to µpc . See section 9.
0x57 JUMPI 2 0 Conditionally(alter the program counter.
µs [0] if µs [1] 6= 0
JJUMPI (µ) ≡
µpc + 1 otherwise
This has the effect of writing said value to µpc . See section 9.
0x58 PC 0 1 Get the value of the program counter prior to the increment
corresponding to this instruction.
µ0s [0] ≡ µpc
0x59 MSIZE 0 1 Get the size of active memory in bytes.
µ0s [0] ≡ 32µi
0x5a GAS 0 1 Get the amount of available gas, including the corresponding reduction
for the cost of this instruction.
µ0s [0] ≡ µg
0x5b JUMPDEST 0 0 Mark a valid destination for jumps.
This operation has no effect on machine state during execution.
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 34

60s & 70s: Push Operations

Value Mnemonic δ α Description
0x60 PUSH1 0 1 Place 1 byte item on stack.
µ0s [0] ≡ c(µpc +(1)
Ib [x] if x < kIb k
where c(x) ≡
0 otherwise
The bytes are read in line from the program code’s bytes array.
The function c ensures the bytes default to zero if they extend past the limits.
The byte is right-aligned (takes the lowest significant place in big endian).
0x61 PUSH2 0 1 Place 2-byte item on stack.
µ0s [0] ≡ c (µpc + 1) . . . (µpc + 2)

with c(x) ≡ (c(x0 ), ..., c(xkxk−1 )) with c as defined as above.

The bytes are right-aligned (takes the lowest significant place in big endian).
.. .. .. .. ..
. . . . .
0x7f PUSH32 0 1 Place 32-byte (full word) item on
stack.
µ0s [0] ≡ c (µpc + 1) . . . (µpc + 32)
where c is defined as above.
The bytes are right-aligned (takes the lowest significant place in big endian).
80s: Duplication Operations
Value Mnemonic δ α Description
0x80 DUP1 1 2 Duplicate 1st stack item.
µ0s [0] ≡ µs [0]
0x81 DUP2 2 3 Duplicate 2nd stack item.
µ0s [0] ≡ µs [1]
.. .. .. .. ..
. . . . .
0x8f DUP16 16 17 Duplicate 16th stack item.
µ0s [0] ≡ µs [15]
90s: Exchange Operations
Value Mnemonic δ α Description
0x90 SWAP1 2 2 Exchange 1st and 2nd stack items.
µ0s [0] ≡ µs [1]
µ0s [1] ≡ µs [0]
0x91 SWAP2 3 3 Exchange 1st and 3rd stack items.
µ0s [0] ≡ µs [2]
µ0s [2] ≡ µs [0]
.. .. .. .. ..
. . . . .
0x9f SWAP16 17 17 Exchange 1st and 17th stack items.
µ0s [0] ≡ µs [16]
µ0s [16] ≡ µs [0]
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 35

a0s: Logging Operations

For all logging operations, the state change is to append an additional log entry on to the substate’s log series:
A0l ≡ Al · (Ia , t, µm [µs [0] . . . (µs [0] + µs [1] − 1)])
and to update the memory consumption counter:
µ0i ≡ M (µi , µs [0], µs [1])
The entry’s topic series, t, differs accordingly:
Value Mnemonic δ α Description
0xa0 LOG0 2 0 Append log record with no topics.
t ≡ ()
0xa1 LOG1 3 0 Append log record with one topic.
t ≡ (µs [2])
.. .. .. .. ..
. . . . .
0xa4 LOG4 6 0 Append log record with four topics.
t ≡ (µs [2], µs [3], µs [4], µs [5])
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 36

f0s: System operations

Value Mnemonic δ α Description
0xf0 CREATE 3 1 Create a new account with associated code.
i ≡ µm [µs [1] . . . (µs [1] + µs [2] − 1)]
ζ≡∅ 
∗
Λ(σ , Ia , Io , L(µg ), Ip , µs [0], i, Ie + 1, ζ, Iw ) if µs [0] 6 σ[Ia ]b

0 0 +
(σ , µg , A , o) ≡ ∧ Ie < 1024


σ, µg , ∅ otherwise

σ ∗ ≡ σ except σ ∗ [Ia ]n = σ[Ia ]n + 1
A0 ≡ A d A+ which abbreviates: A0s ≡ As ∪ A+ s ∧ A0l ≡ Al · A+ l ∧
0 + 0 +
At ≡ At ∪ At ∧ Ar ≡ Ar + Ar
µ0s [0] ≡ x
where x = 0 if the code execution for this operation failed due to an
exceptional halting (or for a REVERT) σ 0 = ∅, or Ie = 1024
(the maximum call depth limit is reached) or µs [0] > σ[Ia ]b (balance of the caller
is too low to fulfil the value transfer); and otherwise x = A(Ia , σ[Ia ]n , ζ, i), the
address of the newly created account (80).
µ0i ≡ M (µi , µs [1], µs [2])
µ0o ≡ ()
Thus the operand order is: value, input offset, input size.
0xf1 CALL 7 1 Message-call into an account.
i ≡ µm [µs [3] . . . (µ s [3] + µs [4] − 1)]
 Θ(σ, Ia , Io , t, t, CCALLGAS (µ),
 if µs [2] 6 σ[Ia ]b ∧
0 0 +
(σ , g , A , o) ≡ Ip , µs [2], µs [2], i, Ie + 1, Iw ) Ie < 1024

(σ, g, ∅, ()) otherwise

n ≡ min({µs [6], kok})
µ0m [µs [5] . . . (µs [5] + n − 1)] = o[0 . . . (n − 1)]
µ0o = o
µ0g ≡ µg + g 0
µ0s [0] ≡ x
A0 ≡ A d A+
t ≡ µs [1] mod 2160
where x = 0 if the code execution for this operation failed due to an
exceptional halting (or for a REVERT) σ 0 = ∅ or if
µs [2] > σ[Ia ]b (not enough funds) or Ie = 1024 (call depth limit reached); x = 1
otherwise.
µ0i ≡ M (M (µi , µs [3], µs [4]), µs [5], µs [6])
Thus the operand order is: gas, to, value, in offset, in size, out offset, out size.
CCALL (σ, µ) ≡ CGASCAP ( (σ, µ) + CEXTRA (σ, µ)
CGASCAP (σ, µ) + Gcallstipend if µs [2] 6= 0
CCALLGAS (σ, µ) ≡
C (σ, µ) otherwise
( GASCAP
min{L(µg − CEXTRA (σ, µ)), µs [0]} if µg ≥ CEXTRA (σ, µ)
CGASCAP (σ, µ) ≡
µs [0] otherwise
CEXTRA (σ, µ)(≡ Gcall + CXFER (µ) + CNEW (σ, µ)
Gcallvalue if µs [2] 6= 0
CXFER (µ) ≡
0 otherwise
(
Gnewaccount if DEAD(σ, µs [1] mod 2160 ) ∧ µs [2] 6= 0
CNEW (σ, µ) ≡
0 otherwise
0xf2 CALLCODE 7 1 Message-call into this account with an alternative account’s code.
Exactly equivalent  to CALL except:
 Θ(σ, Ia , Io , Ia , t, CCALLGAS (µ),
 if µs [2] 6 σ[Ia ]b ∧
(σ 0 , g 0 , A+ , o) ≡ Ip , µs [2], µs [2], i, Ie + 1, Iw ) Ie < 1024

(σ, g, ∅, ()) otherwise

Note the change in the fourth parameter to the call Θ from the 2nd stack value
µs [1] (as in CALL) to the present address Ia . This means that the recipient is in
fact the same account as at present, simply that the code is overwritten.
0xf3 RETURN 2 0 Halt execution returning output data.
HRETURN (µ) ≡ µm [µs [0] . . . (µs [0] + µs [1] − 1)]
This has the effect of halting the execution at this point with output defined.
See section 9.
µ0i ≡ M (µi , µs [0], µs [1])
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 37

0xf4 DELEGATECALL 6 1 Message-call into this account with an alternative account’s code, but
persisting the current values for sender and value.
Compared with CALL, DELEGATECALL takes one fewer arguments. The
omitted argument is µs [2]. As a result, µs [3], µs [4], µs [5] and µs [6] in the
definition of CALL should respectively be replaced with µs [2], µs [3], µs [4] and
µs [5]. Otherwise it is equivalent to CALL except:
 Θ(σ, Is , Io , Ia , t, CCALLGAS (µ),
 if Ie < 1024
(σ 0 , g 0 , A+ , o) ≡ Ip , 0, Iv , i, Ie + 1, Iw )

(σ, g, ∅, ()) otherwise

Note the changes (in addition to that of the fourth parameter) to the second
and ninth parameters to the call Θ.
This means that the recipient is in fact the same account as at present, simply
that the code is overwritten and the context is almost entirely identical.
0xf5 CREATE2 4 1 Create a new account with associated code.
Exactly equivalent to CREATE except:
The salt ζ ≡ µs [3].
0xfa STATICCALL 6 1 Static message-call into an account.
Exactly equivalent to CALL except:
The argument µs [2] is replaced with 0.
The deeper argument µs [3], µs [4], µs [5] and µs [6] are respectively replaced
with µs [2], µs [3], µs [4] and µs [5].
The last argument of Θ is ⊥.
0xfd REVERT 2 0 Halt execution reverting state changes but returning data and remaining gas.
The effect of this operation is described in (134).
For the gas calculation, we use the memory expansion function,
µ0i ≡ M (µi , µs [0], µs [1])
0xfe INVALID ∅ ∅ Designated invalid instruction.
0xff SELFDESTRUCT 1 0 Halt execution and register account for later deletion.
A0s ≡ As∪ {Ia }
∅
 if σ[r] = ∅ ∧ σ[Ia ]b = 0
σ 0 [r] ≡ (σ[r]n , σ[r]b + σ[Ia ]b , σ[r]s , σ[r]c ) if r 6= Ia

(σ[r]n , 0, σ[r]s , σ[r]c ) otherwise


where r = µs [0] mod 2160

σ 0 [Ia ]b = 0 (
Gnewaccount if n
CSELFDESTRUCT (σ, µ) ≡ Gself destruct +
0 otherwise
n ≡ DEAD(σ, µs [0] mod 2160 ) ∧ σ[Ia ]b =
6 0

Appendix I. Genesis Block

The genesis block is 15 items, and is specified thus:

0256 , KEC RLP () , 0160 , stateRoot, 0, 0, 02048 , 217 , 0, 0, 3141592, time, 0, 0256 , KEC (42) , (), ()






(320)

Where 0256 refers to the parent hash, a 256-bit hash which is all zeroes; 0160 refers to the beneficiary address, a 160-bit
hash which is all zeroes; 02048 refers to the log bloom, 2048-bit of all zeros; 217 refers to the difficulty; the transaction trie
root, receipt trie root, gas used, block number and extradata are both 0, being equivalent
to the empty byte array. The
sequences of both ommers and transactions are empty and represented by (). KEC (42) refers to the Keccak hash of a



byte array of length one whose first and only byte is of value 42, used for the nonce. KEC RLP () value refers to the
hash of the ommer list in RLP, both empty lists.
The proof-of-concept series include a development premine, making the state root hash some value stateRoot. Also
time will be set to the initial timestamp of the genesis block. The latest documentation should be consulted for those
values.
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 38

Appendix J. Ethash
J.1. Definitions. We employ the following definitions:
Name Value Description
Jwordbytes 4 Bytes in word.
Jdatasetinit 230 Bytes in dataset at genesis.
Jdatasetgrowth 223 Dataset growth per epoch.
Jcacheinit 224 Bytes in cache at genesis.
Jcachegrowth 217 Cache growth per epoch.
Jepoch 30000 Blocks per epoch.
Jmixbytes 128 mix length in bytes.
Jhashbytes 64 Hash length in bytes.
Jparents 256 Number of parents of each dataset element.
Jcacherounds 3 Number of rounds in cache production.
Jaccesses 64 Number of accesses in hashimoto loop.

J.2. Size of dataset and cache. The size for Ethash’s cache c ∈ B and dataset d ∈ B depend on the epoch, which in
turn depends on the block number.
 
Hi
(321) Eepoch (Hi ) =
Jepoch
The size of the dataset growth by Jdatasetgrowth bytes, and the size of the cache by Jcachegrowth bytes, every epoch. In
order to avoid regularity leading to cyclic behavior, the size must be a prime number. Therefore the size is reduced by a
multiple of Jmixbytes , for the dataset, and Jhashbytes for the cache. Let dsize = kdk be the size of the dataset. Which is
calculated using
(322) dsize = Eprime (Jdatasetinit + Jdatasetgrowth · Eepoch − Jmixbytes , Jmixbytes )
The size of the cache, csize , is calculated using
(323) csize = Eprime (Jcacheinit + Jcachegrowth · Eepoch − Jhashbytes , Jhashbytes )
(
x if x/y ∈ N
(324) Eprime (x, y) =
Eprime (x − 2 · y, y) otherwise

J.3. Dataset generation. In order to generate the dataset we need the cache c, which is an array of bytes. It depends
on the cache size csize and the seed hash s ∈ B32 .
J.3.1. Seed hash. The seed hash is different for every epoch. For the first epoch it is the Keccak-256 hash of a series of 32
bytes of zeros. For every other epoch it is always the Keccak-256 hash of the previous seed hash:
(325) s = Cseedhash (Hi )
(
032 if Eepoch (Hi ) = 0
(326) Cseedhash (Hi ) =
KEC(Cseedhash (Hi − Jepoch )) otherwise
With 032 being 32 bytes of zeros.
J.3.2. Cache. The cache production process involves using the seed hash to first sequentially filling up csize bytes of
memory, then performing Jcacherounds passes of the RandMemoHash algorithm created by Lerner [2014]. The initial
cache c0 , being an array of arrays of single bytes, will be constructed as follows.
We define the array ci , consisting of 64 single bytes, as the ith element of the initial cache:
(
KEC512(s) if i = 0
(327) ci =
KEC512(ci−1 ) otherwise
Therefore c0 can be defined as
(328) c0 [i] = ci ∀ i < n
 
csize
(329) n=
Jhashbytes
The cache is calculated by performing Jcacherounds rounds of the RandMemoHash algorithm to the initial cache c0 :
(330) c = Ecacherounds (c0 , Jcacherounds )

x
 if y = 0
(331) Ecacherounds (x, y) = ERMH (x) if y = 1

Ecacherounds (ERMH (x), y − 1) otherwise

 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 39

Where a single round modifies each subset of the cache as follows:

(332) ERMH (x) = Ermh (x, 0), Ermh (x, 1), ..., Ermh (x, n − 1)

(333) Ermh (x, i) = KEC512(x0 [(i − 1 + n) mod n] ⊕ x0 [x0 [i][0] mod n])
with x0 = x except x0 [j] = Ermh (x, j) ∀ j<i

J.3.3. Full dataset calculation. Essentially, we combine data from Jparents pseudorandomly selected cache nodes, and hash
that to compute the dataset. The entire dataset is then generated by a number of items, each Jhashbytes bytes in size:
 
dsize
(334) d[i] = Edatasetitem (c, i) ∀ i <
Jhashbytes
In order to calculate the single item we use an algorithm inspired by the FNV hash (Glenn Fowler [1991]) in some cases
as a non-associative substitute for XOR.
(335) EFNV (x, y) = (x · (0x01000193 ⊕ y)) mod 232
The single item of the dataset can now be calculated as:
(336) Edatasetitem (c, i) = Eparents (c, i, −1, ∅)
(
Eparents (c, i, p + 1, Emix (m, c, i, p + 1)) if p < Jparents − 2
(337) Eparents (c, i, p, m) =
Emix (m, c, i, p + 1) otherwise
(
KEC512(c[i mod csize ] ⊕ i) if p = 0
(338) Emix (m, c, i, p) =

EFNV m, c[EFNV (i ⊕ p, m[p mod bJhashbytes /Jwordbytes c]) mod csize ] otherwise

J.4. Proof-of-work function. Essentially, we maintain a “mix” Jmixbytes bytes wide, and repeatedly sequentially fetch
Jmixbytes bytes from the full dataset and use the EFNV function to combine it with the mix. Jmixbytes bytes of sequential
access are used so that each round of the algorithm always fetches a full page from RAM, minimizing translation lookaside
buffer misses which ASICs would theoretically be able to avoid.
If the output of this algorithm is below the desired target, then the nonce is valid. Note that the extra application
of KEC at the end ensures that there exists an intermediate nonce which can be provided to prove that at least a small
amount of work was done; this quick outer PoW verification can be used for anti-DDoS purposes. It also serves to provide
statistical assurance that the result is an unbiased, 256 bit number.
The PoW-function returns an array with the compressed mix as its first item and the Keccak-256 hash of the
concatenation of the compressed mix with the seed hash as the second item:
(339)
PoW(Hn , Hn , d) = {mc (KEC(RLP(LH (Hn ))), Hn , d), KEC(sh (KEC(RLP(LH (Hn ))), Hn ) + mc (KEC(RLP(LH (Hn ))), Hn , d))}
With Hn being the hash of the header without the nonce. The compressed mix mc is obtained as follows:
nmix
X
(340) mc (h, n, d) = Ecompress (Eaccesses (d, sh (h, n), sh (h, n), −1), −4)
i=0

The seed hash being:

(341) sh (h, n) = KEC512(h + Erevert (n))
Erevert (n) returns the reverted bytes sequence of the nonce n:
(342) Erevert (n)[i] = n[knk − i]
We note that the “+”-operator between two byte sequences results in the concatenation of both sequences.
The dataset d is obtained as described in section J.3.3.
The number of replicated sequences in the mix is:
 
Jmixbytes
(343) nmix =
Jhashbytes
In order to add random dataset nodes to the mix, the Eaccesses function is used:
(
Emixdataset (d, m, s, i) if i = Jaccesses − 2
(344) Eaccesses (d, m, s, i) =
Eaccesses (Emixdataset (d, m, s, i), s, i + 1) otherwise

(345) Emixdataset (d, m, s, i) = EFNV (m, Enewdata (d, m, s, i))

Enewdata returns an array with nmix elements:
(346)    
Jmixbytes dsize /Jhashbytes
Enewdata (d, m, s, i)[j] = d[EFNV (i ⊕ s[0], m[i mod ]) mod · nmix + j] ∀ j < nmix
Jwordbytes nmix
 ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER ISTANBUL VERSION 40

The mix is compressed as follows:

(347) (
m if i > kmk − 8
Ecompress (m, i) =
Ecompress (EFNV (EFNV (EFNV (m[i + 4], m[i + 5]), m[i + 6]), m[i + 7]), i + 8) otherwise

Appendix K. Anomalies on the Main Network

K.1. Deletion of an Account Despite Out-of-gas. At block 2675119, in the transaction 0xcf416c536ec1a19ed1fb89e
4ec7ffb3cf73aa413b3aa9b77d60e4fd81a4296ba, an account at address 0x03 was called and an out-of-gas occurred during
the call. Against the equation (198), this added 0x03 in the set of touched addresses, and this transaction turned σ[0x03]
into ∅.

Appendix L. List of mathematical symbols

Symbol Latex Command Description
W
\bigvee This is the least upper bound, supremum, or join of all elements operated on. Thus it
is the greatest element of such elements (Davey and Priestley [2002]).