A decentralized ledger is a record of transactions that no single party owns. Instead of one bank or company keeping the official copy, a network of independent computers each hold the same history and agree on updates through consensus. A blockchain is the most common type. Why it matters When the record is shared across many independent parties, any single actor — or small group — can't quietly rewrite history or shut the system down. That distributed ownership of the record is what makes the system decentralized in the first place. Related terms blockchain · node · decentralization
A decentralized ledger is a record of transactions that no single party owns. Instead of one bank or company keeping the official copy, a network of independent computers each hold the same history and agree on updates through consensus. A blockchain is the most common type.
Why it matters
When the record is shared across many independent parties, any single actor — or small group — can’t quietly rewrite history or shut the system down. That distributed ownership of the record is what makes the system decentralized in the first place.