We continue our blog series on Polygon Edge by offering several insights into the Ethereum Virtual Machine. You will learn what the EVM is, its importance in the current DeFi landscape, and how its compatibility benefits Dogechain.

TL;DR

• Before Ethereum, blockchains were one-dimensional and had a single use case — to serve as an online payment mechanism.
• Smart contracts allow users to deploy decentralized applications and exponentially increase the use cases of blockchain technology
• The Ethereum Virtual Machine computes and executes smart contracts.
• Ethereum’s limited capacity for processing transactions creates a need for sovereign EVM-compatible blockchains like Dogechain.
• Since Dogechain is EVM-compatible, developers can seamlessly port Ethereum dApps onto the blockchain.

Evolution of Blockchain Technology

Before Ethereum, blockchains were arguably one-dimensional in scope. In particular, Bitcoin and similar networks were created to provide a form of decentralized money. They served as a means of secure, permissionless, peer-to-peer online payments. However, Vitalik Buterin and other visionary founders saw the untapped potential of distributed ledger technology.

With the advent of smart contracts, Ethereum began unlocking the dormant capabilities inherent to decentralization. In short, the technology provided humanity with a global computational network for deploying peer-to-peer applications. Ethereum even brought the benefits of blockchain technology (security, immutability, transparency) to software development.

As a result, blockchain developers have been able to increase the technology’s use cases exponentially, most notably in finances, logistics, healthcare, entertainment, and gaming, among others.

At the core of this distributed supercomputer lies the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

What are Smart Contracts?

To properly understand what the Ethereum Virtual Machine is, we must first touch on the concept of smart contracts.

Smart contracts operate as a specialized type of account on the Ethereum network. In contrast to user accounts controlled by individually-held private keys, contracts are deployed by the network.

In this regard, smart contracts operate automatically via predetermined programming instead of being managed by a user. Users can interact with the contracts through transactions, which will trigger the contract’s specified functions.

Noteworthy characteristics of smart contracts include:

• They use code to enforce pre-determined rules;
• An inability to be deleted (by default).
• Interactions with smart contracts are irreversible.

In a nutshell, crypto users should view smart contracts as the building blocks for creating decentralized applications. With smart contracts, dApp users can interact with the blockchain in a variety of ways, far beyond simply sending crypto online.

What is the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)?

The EVM is the part of Ethereum that handles smart contract deployment and execution. Ethereum as a whole can be considered a data structure, one that not only holds all accounts and balances but also serves as a machine state that can change from block to block. It’s the EVM that determines the rule for computing a new valid state at the creation of a new block.

At a high level, we can think of the EVM as a global decentralized computer that contains millions of executable objects, each with its own permanent data store. This engine provides the network with an abstraction layer for computation and storage. Every node in the Ethereum network runs an EVM instance, allowing them to agree on the same set of instructions that the protocol needs to execute.

To provide a simple analogy, the EVM places transactions in a queue, computes them, and executes their corresponding smart contracts. As such, the EVM is a critical component of Ethereum. It enables anyone to run code in a trustless ecosystem, where the outcome is both guaranteed and predictable.

What is EVM Compatibility?

Ethereum pioneered smart contract technology and remains the largest player in this niche. Accordingly, a wide majority of DeFi apps run on its network (including DEX’s and lending protocols). At the height of the 2021 bull market, users locked more than $100 billion in crypto in Ethereum smart contracts, proving its dominance in the industry.

And the number of transactions on Ethereum continues to grow due to the increased adoption of DeFi, blockchain games, and NFTs. Nonetheless, the EVM retains a limited capacity for processing transactions which inevitably leads to network congestion and high gas fees.

Consequently, Polygon produces solutions that provide EVM compatibility, while simultaneously offering lower transaction costs and faster settlement. More precisely, the Polygon Edge framework allows developers to create sovereign blockchains like Dogechain, providing an EVM-like code execution environment.

EVM compatibility makes it easy for Ethereum developers to migrate smart contracts without having to write the code from scratch. As a result, they benefit from code portability and established development standards that have already proven their robustness on Ethereum. In short, Polygon Edge helps extend their development capabilities.

Since Polygon Edge facilitates EVM compatibility, it also facilitates user interaction with related blockchain-based entities. After all, EVM-compatible blockchains can communicate with Ethereum dApps including wallets like Metamask, lending protocols, DEXes, and many more.

Dogechain as an EVM-compatible blockchain

By now, you should have a pretty good idea of why smart contracts and dApps are essential to the current blockchain landscape. Both facilitate the added utility and decentralization that a large portion of the crypto community seeks. And in the process, they’re redefining the very nature of cryptocurrencies.

For example, Dogecoin is a 1st generation cryptocurrency that has no smart contract capability. It conserves a single use case — as a form of online payment. The growing desire for Dogecoin to provide users with added utility paved the way for Dogechain. Dogechain is a sovereign blockchain that imbues Dogecoin with smart contract capability.

As a result, Developers can use Dogechain to deploy dApps that serve multiple purposes, including DeFi, NFTs, blockchain games, social media, etc. Dogecoin users simply need to wrap their $DOGE using Dogechain’s bridge smart contract to receive an equal amount of wrapped $DOGE ERC-20 tokens. These tokens can then be plugged into dApps and/or used to pay gas fees when interacting with the Ethereum and Polygon networks.

The EVM compatibility is just the “cherry on top” for developers seeking to port existing code from Ethereum to populate the chain with useful dApps and protocols.

EVM compatibility also implies that the smart contract protocols used to create tokens on Dogechain are equally compatible with the existing Ethereum ecosystem. Hence, users can seamlessly connect Dogechain tokens (wrapped $DOGE and $DC) to existing DeFi dApps by using cross-chain bridges.

Wrapping up

Polygon Edge provides Dogechain developers with Ethereum smart contract portability. It also allows them to build dApps using widely-adopted tools and libraries. And it enables users to transfer assets to and from any EVM-compatible network, most notably Polygon and Ethereum mainnets.

The future of the blockchain space and Web3 will rely on an ecosystem of interoperable blockchains that can seamlessly communicate with each other. Dogechain uses Polygon Edge to plug into the most important player in the smart contract ecosystem and port their Dogecoin into the ever-growing ecosystem of DeFi and NFTs.

Dogechain is bringing DeFi & long awaited utility to Dogecoin. Join the family!

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