Distributed Ledger

Distributed Ledger (DL) has gained huge attention in the last years and will shift the conduction of business in the future. Until today, because of the great dynamics in the field a systematic approach to structure and define the field of DL does not exist. This led to a heterogeneous landscape of DL definitions and thus, misleading discussions. This paper gives a systematic overview of principles relevant to understand and structure the DL field. Furthermore, based on this it describes DL concepts and shows examples of protocols. The result can then be used for further research but also as a basis for successful collaborations in the field of DL.