What is a public blockchain?

A public blockchain network is, as the name suggests, a network open to everyone with no restrictions. Similarly, the blockchain ledger that keeps a record of all transactions that take place on the network, can be viewed and verified by anyone as long as they have the correct equipment.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are two of the largest public blockchains in production today and can offer some of the highest levels of security available. However, the open and anonymous nature of the platform can also attract illegal activity and due to the vast size of a distributed ledger, large amounts of computational power are still required in some cases to maintain it.

For further reading, see our article about private blockchain networks.