Crypto glossary
Distributed ledger technology (DLT)
Distributed ledger technology (DLT) is a database replicated and kept in sync across many participants, with no single party holding the master copy.
A distributed ledger is a record of transactions or data that many independent computers store and update together. Each participant holds a full or partial copy, and a shared set of rules decides which new entries are valid and in what order they are added, so the copies stay identical without a central administrator reconciling them.
Blockchains are the best-known kind of DLT, grouping entries into chained blocks. Other designs, such as directed acyclic graphs, link transactions directly to each other. Banks, stock exchanges and central banks often prefer the broader DLT label when they test settlement systems on private networks that do not need a public cryptocurrency.
Not every distributed ledger is decentralised or open. A ledger run by five known banks is distributed but still depends on trusting those operators, and many corporate pilots turned out to work just as well with a conventional shared database. The label alone says little about security or censorship resistance.
Example
A group of European banks tests a DLT platform where each bank runs a node, so interbank payments are recorded once on a shared ledger instead of in five separate internal databases.