Virtual Machine

Virtual Machine

An Actor in the Filecoin Blockchain is the equivalent of the smart contract in the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

The Filecoin Virtual Machine (VM) is the system component that is in charge of execution of all actors code. Execution of actors on the Filecoin VM (i.e., on-chain executions) incur a gas cost.

Any operation applied (i.e., executed) on the Filecoin VM produces an output in the form of a State Tree (discussed below). The latest State Tree is the current source of truth in the Filecoin Blockchain. The State Tree is identified by a CID, which is stored in the IPLD store.