Welcome to
M Ξ T A P L Ξ X R Ξ V A M P Ξ D
by the ENGLAND’S COUNCIL OF LEGISLATION AND GOVERNING BODY OF
HYPER REAL SIMULATIONS AND CONSTRUCTS

What’s ether (ETH) seriously? Why do I need it?

Ether is a digital currency/token that powers the Ethereum blockchain network. You can think of it like Bitcoin with a quite different design in nature. Ether is not intended to be a unit of currency on a peer-to-peer payment network; rather, it acts as the “fuel” or “gas” that powers the Ethereum network. In some ways, Ether acts like any other currency, for example, its value fluctuates with the rest of the market just like USD, GBP, etc.

ps: ｡◕‿◕｡

What is a smart contract and token?

A smart contract is a computer protocol intended to digitally facilitate, verify, or enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract. Smart contracts allow the performance of credible transactions without third parties. These transactions are trackable and irreversible. The beauty of smart contracts is that as opposed to traditional contracts which are validated by law, smart contracts are mathematically guaranteed. It’s called a smart contract because of the way it can lead multiple participants to establish rules of interaction. It is secure and immutable. Once you deploy it, all parties can rely on it.

As such, tokens are not written into the original Ethereum blockchain database. Tokens are written into the storage of the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine). Every smart contract can have its own storage, to store the balances of its own tokens. Thus, you can practically create as many tokens as you want from a single contract.

For example, in A.I.F.X Key, there is one smart contract and ~250 tokens which inherit from the contract. In one way, you can think of the contract as the cookie template and the tokens as the cookies you make, only now the cookie template is a piece of code written in a language called Solidity and the cookies let you in a cyber construct.

My dApp’s use a token called ERC-721. Taken from their website; “ERC-721 is a free, open standard that describes how to build non-fungible or unique tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. While most tokens are fungible (every token is the same as every other token), ERC-721 tokens are all unique. Think of them like rare, one-of-a-kind collectables.”

For example, in the Realiti project, each painting is an NFT [non-fungible token] that inherits from a smart contract, and each token is signed with a function that stores the 3D RGB matrix of the associated image file, in other terms, the ‘tensor’ created by the deep learning model, is stored within the token.

What is gas?

‘Gas’ is a shorthand used to describe the cost of powering a transaction or contract in Ethereum, which is the blockchain network that our applications are distributed with. Because blockchain is decentralised, every transaction is distributed through multiple computers, not a central server. This ensures each token, an artwork or key in our case is secure and one-of-a-kind. It also takes a lot of computational power, which is covered by the cost of gas.

‘Gas’ is composed of two parts: Gas Price and Gas Limit. Gas Price is what you offer to pay the miners (in a tiny measurement of ether called “gwei”) for each operation to execute the smart contract. Gas Limit is how many operations you let them to do before they run out of gas and drop the transaction. 1 gwei = 1/1,000,000,000th of an ether.

What a forward-thinking and dynamic action plan, right? ಠ‿↼

Future of M Ξ T A P L Ξ X

This is just the beginning of it's new phase.

Finishing note

First of all, thanks very much if you have read through this or at least tried to be a part of this.

If you find any bugs/issues or would like to suggest improvements please feel free to write us any time at ecolagbohrsac2021@gmail.com, I would love to hear from you!

2024 note: reading this now is just a feeling beyond words, I remember the very first time i put this together thinking who else would even bother checking all these or even know about Ethereum :-)