Blockchain technology was invented for bitcoin as its
fundamental technology. It is a particular type or subset of
so-called distributed ledger technology ("DLT"). The DLT
is a way of recording and sharing data across multiple data stores
(also known as ledgers), which each have the exact same data
records and collectively maintained and controlled by a distributed
network of computer servers, which are called nodes. Blockchain is
a mechanism that employs an encryption method known as cryptography
and uses (a set of) specific mathematical algorithms to create and
verify a continuously growing data structure – to which data
can only be added and from which existing data cannot be removed
– that takes the form of a chain of “transaction
blocks”, which functions as distributed ledger1.
