The Ethereum network
The Ethereum network is a peer-to-peer network where nodes participate in order to maintain the blockchain and contribute to the consensus mechanism. Networks can be divided into three types, based on requirements and usage. These types are described in the following subsections.
Mainnet
Mainnet is the current live network of Ethereum. The current version of mainnet is Byzantium (Metropolis) and its chain ID is 1
. Chain ID is used to identify the network. A block explorer which shows detailed information about blocks and other relevant metrics is available at https://etherscan.io. This can be used to explore the Ethereum blockchain.
Testnet
Testnet is also called Ropsten and is the widely used test network for the Ethereum blockchain. This test blockchain is used to test smart contracts and DApps before being deployed to the production live blockchain. Moreover, being a test network, it allows experimentation and research. The main testnet is called Ropsten which contains...