# State

[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_\(computer_science\)) defines state as the following:

> In [information technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology) and [computer science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science), a system is described as **stateful** if it is designed to remember preceding events or user interactions; the remembered information is called the **state** of the system.

In a traditional cloud computing architecture, the database is most likely used as state storage. In the blockchain world, the whole blockchain is a giant distributed state machine. For example, Ethereum itself is a state machine. Everytime clients send transactions to update the state, every new block means a new updated state is released.

In the TEA Project, we don't store the application state in the blockchain. Instead, the state is stored in a group of [state\_machine\_replica](https://github.com/tearust/t-rust/blob/master/docs/_gitbook-dev-docs/z_glossary/state_machine_replica.md)s. We use a new [Proof of Time](https://dev.teaproject.org/consensus#proof-of-time) hardware consensus to achieve super fast speed (relative to traditional blockchain) and processing power without sacrificing security or scalability.

Please keep reading the [state machine](https://github.com/tearust/t-rust/blob/master/docs/_gitbook-dev-docs/z_glossary/state_machine.md) and [consensus](https://dev.teaproject.org/z_glossary/consensus) for more details.