Is Bitcoin better understood as a state machine or a database?

Bitcoin is commonly described as a “decentralized database,” but looking at how a full node actually works, that framing feels a bit off.

Blocks form an append-only transaction log. Nodes replay that log to derive the current UTXO set, which Bitcoin Core stores in LevelDB (chainstate/). That’s not really how traditional databases work — it feels closer to event sourcing or a replicated state machine where the ledger state is derived rather than primary.

So which mental model is actually correct?

•   Is the UTXO set the “database “?
•   Or is the block log canonical, with the UTXO set essentially being a cache that could be reconstructed?

Is there anything from early mailing list discussions or Satoshi’s design notes that addresses this directly?



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