Use linked records if you want your records to be publicly linked together on the blockchain. This may be because the records are members of a collection e.g. a set of components, or because the records are historical versions of a document, or whatever suits your use case.
nChain Event enables you to link records together on the blockchain.
You start by creating a record at a linked location.
You can update the linked location to add further records or terminate the linked locations to prevent the addition of further records.
You can also read individual records from any of the linked locations and verify that the original records match those written to the blockchain.
Records are linked together using transaction output and inputs. The latest location of the linked locations is either available to extend the linked records (has an unused output) or is terminated (has no unused outputs).
There can be any number of different linked records across any number of blocks.
In this example there are several sets of linked records:
Linked records A was not updated in the latest block Linked records B was not updated in the previous block Linked records C was not updated for several blocks Linked records E has not been updated at all yet
Linked records provide the following additional capabilities over independent records:
Provability of the sequence of events (see A, B, C below)
Provability of linkage between events (see Link AB and Link BC below)
A state of created, updated or deleted which can be interpreted according to the use case
All linked locations records are available on the blockchain (avoiding vendor lock-in)
Interoperability between different nChain Event operators or similar transaction funders (see X, Y, Z below – the Z link can only be updated by Bob’s application)
