A Ledger Everyone Shares

A shared record of truth

A blockchain is, at heart, a ledger — a list of records. What makes it special is that the same copy of the ledger is held by many independent participants at once. There is no single master copy that one company controls.

Because everyone holds the same list and new entries must be agreed on, no single participant can quietly rewrite history. This is why people describe blockchains as "trustless": you do not have to trust any one party, only the rules the network follows.

• Distributed: many identical copies, not one central database.
• Append-only: you add new records, you do not edit old ones.
• Agreed: the network follows shared rules to accept new entries.