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On Ethereum, each low-level operation available in the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is called an Operational Code (OPCODE). There are OPCODES for the following categories¹⁾. : A miner executes the computation associated with each transaction being included in a block, resulting in an updated state. Upon successfully mining a block, a miner broadcasts the block to the network. Each of the other miners and non-mining nodes verifies the validity of the transactional computation and resulting state change before accepting the block as valid, incorporating the block into their copy of the blockchain, and moving on to the next block.²⁾ ===== Processing Costs ===== Return to Top The sample data shown in the first part of Table ##REF:gasCosts## rows 1-2, demonstrates the cost of Gas for performing simple add operations on the Ethereum blockchain. The first row in the table shows the cost of performing a single addition on the Ethereum Blockchain. Note: the same would occur for a single subtraction. : Line 1: The cost to perform a simple addition once is about \$0.000002655 U.S. Dollars. This seems pretty inexpensive until the problem is expanded to do the same calculation 1 Million times. : Line 2: The cost to perform a simple addition one million times is about \$26.550000000 U.S. Dollars. This becomes significant and should be of concern for most projects. As a comparison, using the Amazon Web Service (AWS) cloud and a Python program, adding the two numbers together one Million times takes about 0.04 seconds at a CPU cost of \$0.0059/hour making the calculations \$0.000001639/second or \$0.000000066 for the entire operation on AWS. The results are stunning: \$0.000000066 on AWS versus \$26.55 on Ethereum. The Ethereum calculation is about 400 Million times more expensive (or 40 Million if you are willing to pay a low gas price). ===== Data Storage ===== Return to Top The sample data shown in the first part of Table ##REF:gasCosts## rows 3-5, demonstrates the cost of Gas for storing data on the blockchain. This could be a simple, single value such as the number of days until a Smart COntract expires (i.e., simple integer) or it could be something more ambitious such as a short story, a music file, or a video. Storing data on the blockchain is extremely expensive. The reason for the cost is the storage of data on a blockchain is immutable and is replicated across tens of thousands of Ethereum Nodes in the Node Network. Therefore, uploading a short story, a music file, or a video onto the blockchain is cost-prohibitive: : Line 3: The cost of storing 256-bit word is about \$0.171 U.S. Dollars. requires about 20,000 gas. This is about 6,000 times more expensive than adding two numbers together (see Line 1) : Line 4: The cost of storing 1MB is about \$18.75 : Line 5: The cost of storing 1GB is about \$18750.00 Another bottleneck in storing large amounts of data is the current Block Gas Limit of approximately 4700000 gas/block. At this cap of gas per block, it would take over 132 blocks to write 1 MB of data to the blockchain, and that is assuming you can manage to hog all of the gas per block and that there are no other operations required! ===== Quantitative Data ===== Return to Top <table gasCosts> <caption>The gas costs on Ethereum for calculation and storage on the blockchain.³⁾ </caption> Given: Median Gas Price on 23 August 2017 * 1 Gwei equals 0.000000001 ETH) * median gas price (28 Gwei) * USD/ETH exchange rate ($295/ETH) |< 100% 20% >| ^ Processing ^^^^^^^^^ ^ Row Number * Task ^ Gas required ^ Cost (ETH) ^ Cost (USD) ^ Ops per ETH ^ Ops per USD ^ Ops per Block ^ Blocks to complete OP | ^ 1 ^ Add or subtract two integers | 3 | 0.000000009 | 0.000002655 | 11111111.11 | 37664.78343 | 1566666.667 | 0.0000006382978230 | ^ 2 ^ Add two Integers, 1 Million times | 3000000 | 0.09 | 26.550000000 | 11.1111111 | 0.037664783 | 1.566666667 | 0.638297872 | ^ Storage ^^^^^^^^^ ^ Task ^ Gas required ^ Cost (ETH) ^ Cost (USD) ^ Ops per ETH ^ Ops per USD ^ Ops per Block ^ Blocks to complete OP | ^ 3 ^ Save a 256-bit word to Storage | 20000 | 0.0006 | 0.171 | 1666.666667 | 5.649711751 | 243 | 0.004255319 | ^ 4 ^ Save 1MB to Storage (31250 256-bit words) | 625000000 | 18.75 | 5531.25 | 0.053333333 | 0.000180791 | 0.00752 | 132.9787234 | ^ 5 ^ Save 1GB to Storage (31250 256-bit words) | 6250000000000 | 18750 | 5531250 | 0.00005333333 | 0.00000018079 | 0.00000752 | 132978.7234 | : Note: The data mentioned above are only true for a public Ethereum blockchain. The data could be totally different for private or permissioned blockchains. </table> ~~DISCUSSION:on|Outstanding Issues~~ ~~DISCUSSION:off~~