Chapter 4 · Ethereum & the EVM · lesson 1
Ethereum vs the EVM
7 min
Builds on The chain as a state machine
People use "Ethereum" and "the EVM" interchangeably. They are not the same thing, and the difference explains why your Solidity skills work on forty different chains.
The EVM is a specification — a definition of a machine: its opcodes, their gas costs, how memory and storage behave. It is a document and a set of implementations.
Ethereum is one network that runs it, with its own validators, its own ETH, and its own history.
Anyone can start a network that runs the same machine. Many have.
Why so many chains feel identical
Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, BNB Chain, Avalanche — all EVM-compatible. The same bytecode, the same addresses, the same tooling.
That is why deploying to a new chain is often a config change rather than a rewrite, and why a bug in your contract is a bug on every chain you deployed it to.
Predict
You deploy identical bytecode to Ethereum and to Base. Do the two contracts share anything?
Layer 2s are a different thing again
Arbitrum and Optimism are not merely EVM-compatible chains — they are rollups. They execute transactions off Ethereum, then post compressed data back to it, so Ethereum remains the settlement layer.
The practical effect: much cheaper transactions, with security ultimately anchored to Ethereum rather than to a separate validator set. The practical catch: withdrawing back to Ethereum can take days on some designs.
Check
What does it mean for a chain to be EVM-compatible?
Worth remembering
- The EVM is a specification; Ethereum is one network that implements it.
- Dozens of chains run the same machine, so bytecode and tooling transfer directly.
- Chains share no state — the same address on two chains is two unrelated contracts.
- Bridges connect isolated chains and are the most attacked infrastructure in crypto.
- Rollups execute off-chain and settle to Ethereum, trading withdrawal delay for much lower fees.