Deploying an Ethereum node on AWS Cloud

Ethereum Node Series I — Step-by-step to deploy an Ethereum on AWS Cloud using an Ubuntu VM

First, a Brief Ethereum Intro (to refresh our memory)

Created in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum has its native currency, Ether, ticker symbol ETH, which has a market cap of around 200 billion dollars as of June 2021. Ether is used both for transactions and used as currency to reward the miners for their work through transaction fees paid by the users and smart contracts. Per day, Ethereum processes more than one million transactions which are approximately four times more than Bitcoin.

Ethereum is a proof of work blockchain just like Bitcoin. It’s moving however to Ethereum 2.0 which will adopt proof of stake as a consensus mechanism.

It’s important to say that Ethereum is completely free to read, i.e. the blockchain is completely public, but it’s not free to write. To write on the blockchain, any code, smart contract, data or transaction, payment in fees, also called gas, must be made. It’s kinda like this: you can see who is at the party, you can hear what music they are listening to, but to enter the party, you will have to pay!

There are entire industries being built on top of Ethereum thanks to the smart contract capabilities. Hundreds of ICOs raised billions of dollars. Many NFTs marketplaces buy and sell non-fungible tokens for art, collectibles, and cute criptokitties. Dozens of DeFi platforms are running on Ethereum, building entire banks on the platform.

Enough BS, let’s get our hands dirty and deploy that Ethereum node

Let’s play around with Mr Ethereum! We will need to use a Virtual Machine to deploy your Ethereum node using Ethereum Geth for this section. You can follow along (it’s a fantastic way to learn) or just read it. If you get stuck for some reason, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me and ask for help!

Update: I have created a video with the steps to create an Ethereum node on AWS too! Check it out!