Accounts of an account-balance based blockchain system are practically storage spaces that access is controlled by a public - private key ownership or identity proof and validated by the nodes. In a simplest case an account stores the balance of a use, a signature with the private key provides kind of a proof of identity, that you are allowed to access to the given account. It is important to note that in a transfer transaction, there are two balances that are validated differently:
- the from balance must be checked if it matches with the signature of the private key of the account and the balance must be bigger than the amount of cryptocurrency to be transferred.
- the to account must be compatible however with much less rules. Practically, it must not eve exist, it can be added to the chain on the fly.
Ethereum extends this simple model to two different kinds of accounts: externally owned accounts and smart contract accounts. As externally owned accounts can practically initiate transactions to smart contracts, with prooved ownership of private public key information, smart contracts only react for external events. However the model can be even further extended. In a certain blockchain system, there can be:
- Any kind of different account, with different state storage and validation rules, like accounts for miners, validators, special roles executing optimizations...
