What is Timechain?
An alternative name for the blockchain, drawn from Bitcoin's original source comments, emphasising that its function is ordering events in time.
The framing is useful. Bitcoin's core innovation is not a data structure but a way to establish an agreed order of events without an authority to declare it.
Whether you call it a blockchain or a timechain, the property that matters is that the ordering is expensive to fake and cheap to check.
Related terms
Blockchain
The append-only chain of blocks that records every Bitcoin transaction, where each block commits to the one…
How it worksProof of work
The mechanism that secures Bitcoin: miners must find a hash below a difficulty target, which is expensive to…
BasicsSatoshi Nakamoto
The pseudonym of Bitcoin's creator, who published the white paper in 2008, released the software in 2009, and…
This definition is part of the Bitcoin Logical glossary. For the fuller explanation, start with Learn, or see the live numbers on The Bitcoin Signal.