A blockchain is a distributed, append-only database that is shared among the nodes of a computer network. It has no central authority, but rather relies on consensus between nodes to validate the chain of data as it gets built. The innovation with a blockchain is that it guarantees the fidelity and security of a record of data and generates trust without the need for a trusted third party (like a bank, a government, or a private company).
Blockchains are best known for their crucial role in cryptocurrency systems, such as bitcoin (2009) or ethereum (2013), even though they were invented in 1991 for timestamping documents in a way that could not be tampered with.
The internal data structure of a blockchain is an ordered linked list of blocks, which are immutable data containers.