Towards a Unified Model for Replicated, Shared Ledgers

Don’t Say The “B Word”!

I’ve come to the conclusion that saying “blockchain” has become unhelpful. It just confuses people. It means too many different things to different people and so it’s almost impossible to have a conversation in this space without talking past each other. So, as I argued in this piece on permissionless ledgers and this piece on permissioned ledgers, it can be useful to talk in terms of replicated shared ledgers – since I think this gets to the heart of what unifies – and separates – these two worlds.

• Shared: because multiple actors can read or write to different parts of the ledger
• Replicated: because everybody who needs a copy can have a copy, rather than relying on a powerful central entity

In this piece, I try to bring it all together – to explain why we should be thinking about permissionless ledgers as a…