The paper reports the deterministic generation and full characterization of multi-particle W-state entangled states of trapped ions. The authors trapped strings of up to eight ${}^{40}$Ca$^+$ ions in a linear Paul trap, using the $|S_{1/2}\rangle$ and $|D_{5/2}\rangle$ states as qubits. They performed state tomography to obtain the density matrices of the entangled states, confirming genuine multi-particle entanglement for four to eight particles. The W-states are characterized by their maximally persistent and robust entanglement, making them valuable resources for quantum information processing and multi-party quantum communication. The generation process involves addressing errors, imperfect optical pumping, non-resonant excitations, and laser frequency noise, which are identified as major sources of deviations from the ideal W-states. However, these issues are purely technical and do not pose fundamental obstacles to increasing the number of particles. The scalability of the approach is demonstrated, with the required pulse area scaling only with $\log N$ and the overall scaling behavior being $\sqrt{N} \log N$. The paper also investigates the entanglement properties, including genuine multipartite entanglement, distillability, and bipartite aspects of multiparticle entanglement.The paper reports the deterministic generation and full characterization of multi-particle W-state entangled states of trapped ions. The authors trapped strings of up to eight ${}^{40}$Ca$^+$ ions in a linear Paul trap, using the $|S_{1/2}\rangle$ and $|D_{5/2}\rangle$ states as qubits. They performed state tomography to obtain the density matrices of the entangled states, confirming genuine multi-particle entanglement for four to eight particles. The W-states are characterized by their maximally persistent and robust entanglement, making them valuable resources for quantum information processing and multi-party quantum communication. The generation process involves addressing errors, imperfect optical pumping, non-resonant excitations, and laser frequency noise, which are identified as major sources of deviations from the ideal W-states. However, these issues are purely technical and do not pose fundamental obstacles to increasing the number of particles. The scalability of the approach is demonstrated, with the required pulse area scaling only with $\log N$ and the overall scaling behavior being $\sqrt{N} \log N$. The paper also investigates the entanglement properties, including genuine multipartite entanglement, distillability, and bipartite aspects of multiparticle entanglement.