Ledgers
A ledger represents the state of the Stellar network at a point in time. It is shared across all Core nodes in the network and contains the list of accounts and balances, orders on the distributed exchange, smart contract data, and any other persisting data.
Blockchains typically refer to the ledger as the entire record of all transactions on the blockchain and blocks as individual units of data that contain a collection of transactions. In Stellar, "ledger" can refer to both.
During each Stellar Consensus Protocol round, validators agree on a transaction set to apply to the last closed ledger. When that set is applied, a new last closed ledger is defined. Each ledger is cryptographically linked to the unique previous ledger, creating a historical chain that goes back to the genesis ledger.
📄 Headers
Ledger headers capture the metadata that links each Stellar ledger to its history and summarizes recent transactions.
📄 Entries
Ledger entries are the durable data structures that make up the Stellar network state.