Reliable Ledgers

Abstract

Distributed ledgers, including blockchains, are used to make information more secure and enhance the reliability of its transactions. However, we do not require distributed ledgers to be reliable themselves; instead, we rely on the reliability of the system’s components and trust that the distributed ledger technology delivers as promised unless we notice a problem. There are limited tools for tracking the performance of distributed ledgers and reporting on their reliability, but they rely on trust that the distributed ledger shares openly what needs to be known. What we still need is independent oversight and key performance metrics that align precisely with the use case for the distributed ledger in use.