You do not need to understand a blockchain to use Zoide, the same way you do not need to understand banking to use a card. But four ideas will save you every confusion on this site.
1. It is a ledger, not a place
A blockchain is a list of transactions, in order, that everybody can read. It is not a folder, not a server, and not a company. When someone says a piece is «on the chain», they mean the transaction that created it is in that list.
2. Nobody owns it, so nobody can edit it
The list lives on thousands of computers at once, and they agree on what is in it. There is no administrator with a delete button — not us either.
That is the part with real consequences:
- What is written stays written. A sale, a transfer, an address: permanent.
- A mistake cannot be undone by asking. There is nobody to ask.
- Anybody can check anything. You never have to take our word for what happened.
That last one is not a figure of speech. Every action here leaves a transaction id, and with it anybody can look it up in a public explorer:
3. What is public is more than you would guess
Every transaction, every amount and every address is visible to anyone, forever. Names are not there — an address is a string of characters, not your identity — but everything that address ever does is linked together in public.
So: privacy on a blockchain is not «nobody can see it». It is «nobody knows it is you» — for as long as nothing connects your address to your name.
4. Everything costs a little
Writing to that ledger costs a small fee, paid to the network, not to us. It is what keeps thousands of computers doing the work. On the chain Zoide uses, that fee is tiny — see What a transaction costs.
What this means on Zoide
| When you… | On the chain |
|---|---|
| Mint a piece | A transaction writes it, permanently |
| Buy or sell | A transaction moves it, in public |
| Delete your account | Your Zoide records go; the chain does not |
That last row is the one worth reading twice, and our privacy policy says so in the same words.