In a very real sense, we can consider the business network as being a history of transactions. What do we mean by this? Well, we've seen that business networks are comprised of participants involved in multi-party transactional asset exchange defined by contracts. However, if we re-orient ourselves slightly, we see that the network is a product of its transaction history, which in turn cannot be separated from the assets and participants who initiated the transactions.

All these concepts are part of a whole, which supports and reinforces itself. Participants were just our first step to understanding—an entrance into the world of business networks. By learning more, we realize that transactions are in fact central, while at the same time being meaningless unless they refer to the assets and participants inside the network they both create, change, and describe! It's the transaction history that brings everything together into a coherent whole, and in this sense, it is the business network.