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distributed ledger

Defined in 2 places across 2 titles of the United States Code.

The term "distributed ledger" means a ledger that—

(A) is shared across a set of distributed nodes, which are devices or processes, that participate in a network and store a complete or partial replica of the ledger;

(B) is synchronized between the nodes;

(C) has data appended to it by following the ledger's specified consensus mechanism;

(D) may be accessible to anyone (public) or restricted to a subset of participants (private); and

(E) may require participants to have authorization to perform certain actions (engaging) or require no authorization (permissionless).

Source

The term “distributed ledger” means technology in which data is shared across a network that creates a public digital ledger of verified transactions or information among network participants and cryptography is used to link the data to maintain the integrity of the public ledger and execute other functions.

Source