Ethereum Virtual Machine

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is the stack-based runtime that executes smart contract code the same way on every full node of the Ethereum network, so all validators reach identical results from identical input — Ethereum's documentation describes it as "a decentralized virtual environment that executes code consistently and securely across all Ethereum nodes." Developers write smart contracts mainly in Solidity, and every operation the EVM runs costs gas, which prices computation and protects the network from spam. Because the EVM is the most widely implemented contract runtime in Web3, dozens of other networks describe themselves as "EVM-compatible," meaning they can run the same Solidity contracts, wallets, and tooling built for Ethereum itself. That broad compatibility is part of why most tokenized-domain infrastructure, including NFT-based domain ownership, targets EVM chains first.