What’s the difference between a distributed ledger and a blockchain?

A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger.  But new distributed ledgers are emerging. These are databases where control over the data’s evolution is shared between entities. Here’s a handy cheatsheet.

Key takeways:

• If you want to include all the initiatives going on, use the term “distributed ledgers”.
• If you mean blockchains, where unrelated transactions are bundled into blocks, which are chained together using hashes and (in most cases) broadcast to all participating entities for batch processing, use “blockchains”.
• If you like acronyms, use “DLT”: Distributed Ledger Technology

All blockchains are distributed ledgers, but not all distributed ledgers are blockchains!

For more depth, I recommend two excellent posts:

• Richard Gendal Brown’s On distributed databases and distributed ledgers
• Colin Platt’s Thoughts on the taxonomy of blockchains & distributed ledger technologies.