This primer aims to equip international development agencies and partners to assess whether and how distributed ledger technology (DLT), such as blockchain, might apply to their work. This primer cannot do justice to the complexity of DLT and its technological underpinnings, philosophical origins, and diverse business models. Instead, it provides:

• a set of key questions to consider for assessing relevance of DLT to particular development challenges;
• a basic summary of the technical aspects of DLT; and
• an illustrative list of DLT applications being tested across a range of sectors.