Ethereum Internals in Go

📚 In 2020, I wrote a book for beginner blockchain developers explaining the core concepts like Transaction, Block, Mempool, Proof of Work Consensus, Peer-to-peer Sync and Wallet in the form of a story of a developer trying to revolutionize his local bar by implementing a decentralized payment system from scratch:

https://web3coach.gumroad.com/l/build-a-blockchain-from-scratch-in-go

It explains blockchain fundamentals using custom, simplified components, helping developers transition from the traditional client-server architecture to the peer-to-peer networks without feeling overwhelmed - but the components were not usable in production.

Time to level-up.

Time to master Ethereum.

Time to learn how one million transactions transferring 1B+ $ daily works under the hood.

Therefore, now, in May 2025, I am writing an in-depth "second edition" where we will together reverse-engineer the Ethereum internals written in GoLang.

Your upcoming Ethereum journey:

Chapter 1 - Run Ethereum Node on Your Laptop

• Clone famous go-ethereum codebase and compile geth binary
• Run geth node and synchronize mainnet

Chapter 2 - Generate Ethereum Account

• Create Externally Owned Ethereum Account (EOA) using go-ethereum code
• Review the cryptography behind EOA - secp256k1, keccak256
• Compare Hex, Base58 and Base64 encodings
• Buy ETH with MetaMask

Chapter 3 - Create Transfer Transaction

• Develop a production-ready transfer CLI tool with tests for code coverage

• Build a real mainnet transaction object
• Serialize transaction using recursive-length prefix (RLP)
• Sign the transaction with EOA
• Broadcast the transaction to the peers around the world from your node

Chapter 4 - Decode Transaction

• Decode raw transaction bytes from Chapter 3
• Extract the v, r, s from transaction signature
• Recover the sender address from the signature
• Verify the transaction signature's authenticity
• Replay transaction

Chapter 5 - Review Transaction Receipts

• Retrieve the receipt for your transaction from Chapter 3 and 4
• Extract and interpret event logs emitted during execution
• Understand Bloom filters for efficient log searching
• Build a CLI tool to monitor and notify on specific transaction events

Chapter 6 - Trace Transaction Execution

• Enable debug API on your geth node
• Intro to callTracer and structLogs
• Capture transaction execution trace using debug_traceTransaction
• Analyze EVM stack, memory and storage operations
• Monitor gas consumption
• Identify state changes produced by transaction execution
• Debug transaction execution failures by analyzing traces

Chapter 7 - Examine State Management

• Explore the Ethereum state trie structure
• Retrieve account state before and after your transaction
• Visualize state changes triggered by transaction execution
• Implement state diff calculation to track modified accounts
• Understand state root calculation and verification

Chapter 8 - Persist Blockchain Data

• Explore LevelDB storage architecture in go-ethereum
• Map database keys and values for transactions, receipts, and headers
• Implement a CLI database explorer to navigate and visualize on-disk structures

Chapter 9 - Explore New Transaction Types

• Type 1 - Optional access lists with EIP-2930
• Type 2 - Fee market mechanism with EIP-1559
• Type 3 - Blob data with EIP-4844
• New pseudo-transaction called UserOperation for Account Abstraction

Chapter 10 - Write Smart Contract

• Intro to Solidity language
• Pre-calculate Smart Contract address with CREATE and CREATE2 opcodes
• Deploy your ERC-20 token with custom logic
• Design off-chain DEX orders with EIP-712
• Call and DelegateCall
• Write a Proxy contract using Transparent, UUPS and Beacon patterns

Chapter 11 - Program a Smart Wallet

• Intro to Account Abstraction
• EIP-4337 architecture: Bundlers, Paymasters, EntryPoints
• EIP-3074 vs EIP-7702
• UserOperations and the eth_sendUserOperation method
• Develop AA-compatible wallet sponsoring transaction gas of its users

Result

You will finish the book with in-depth understanding of the Ethereum blockchain.

🔥 Limited Time Offer!

Pre-order now to:

• Save 30% off the final price - it will cost 102€ later!
• Get immediate access to this time private project repository.
• Receive each chapter as soon as it's completed. The first expected chapter will be in June 2025!

👉 Click "Buy this" to pre-order the book and start your Ethereum journey. You will immediately receive an invite to the private Discord group and access to the private Github repository.

See you on Discord,

Lukáš.