What are smart contracts?

are they some kind of contracts we do in a day to day life? no

smart contracts are simply the code that is deployed on the blockchain.

solidity code → machine code → deployed on the blockchain

flow of smart contracts:

  1. compile the solidity code into byte-code
  2. send a transaction containing the byte-code to an evm node
  3. the node calculates an address for your smart contract

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below solidity compiler there is creation-bytecode and at the node you are seeing the run time bye code.

byte code has op codes (when you write uint a + b, it gets converted into something like a 0x01 b) and each opcode needs specific amount of gas you need to pay as the network fee

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