State

A set of information that represents the “current state” of a system; determining whether or not a transaction is valid, as well as the effect of a transaction, should in the simplest model depend only on state. Examples of state data include the UTXO set in bitcoin, balances + nonces + code + storage in ethereum, and domain name registry entries in Namecoin.

On a blockchain, state describes who owns what and the condition of all smart contracts at a certain point in time. The state of a blockchain grows bigger the more it is used. This problem is known as state bloat.