Since ancient times, we’ve relied on ledgers for recordkeeping in various domains, including contracts, payments, ownership of assets, identities, etc. Ledgers have come a long way and have been at the heart of trust in communities since humans first began writing on clay tablets and papyrus. The discipline evolved over centuries as paper was invented and new methods such as double-entry accounting were devised to leverage the use of ledgers in new and more calculated ways.
The advent and propagation of computers in the 20th century added great speed and convenience to the process of creating, updating and managing ledgers. The internet later made it possible to create digital ledgers that could be accessed from anywhere across the world.
However, while ledgers changed in parallel to technological innovations, one thing about them remained constant, and that was their centralized nature. Centralized ledgers are managed by intermediaries, such as banks, notaries, governments, or large tech companies. These entities assume responsibility for storing and securing the ledgers and act as gatekeepers for people who want to access their information. They also process new transactions and mediate between different parties that want to add or modify records stored on the ledger.
To read more, visit https://amity.io/blog/distributed-ledger-technology/