Public Ledger

A public ledger is a transaction record that anyone can download, read and verify without asking permission. On a public blockchain every transfer, address balance and smart contract call is written to this open ledger, so independent parties can audit supply and activity for themselves rather than trusting a company's statement. Public does not mean identified: addresses are pseudonymous strings rather than names, though analytics firms and exchanges routinely link them to real people. The trade-off is permanence and exposure — anything published to a public ledger stays visible forever and cannot be edited or deleted, so reusing one address for salary, savings and donations quietly reveals your whole financial history to anyone who learns it.