As it relates to the Ethereum blockchain, the “state” is a massive data structure in a format called a “modified Merkle Patricia Trie”.
This dataset contains all Ethereum accounts and balances linked by hashes and reduced to a single root hash stored on a chain. In addition to being a distributed ledger, Ethereum also has native smart contract functionality, which allows it to execute machine code inside of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) defines the rules which determine state changes from block to block.
