Ethereum Account

ACCOUNT TYPES

• Externally-owned account (EOA) – controlled by anyone with the private keys
• Contract account – a smart contract deployed to the network, controlled by code.

Both account types have the ability to:

• Receive, hold and send ETH and tokens
• Interact with deployed smart contracts

Key differences

Externally-owned

• Creating an account costs nothing
• Can initiate transactions
• Transactions between externally-owned accounts can only be ETH/token transfers
• Made up of a cryptographic pair of keys: public and private keys that control account activities

Contract

• Creating a contract has a cost because you’re using network storage
• Can only send transactions in response to receiving a transaction
• Transactions from an external account to a contract account can trigger code which can execute many different actions, such as transferring tokens or even creating a new contract