There is a nice blog post bu IOG: [Cardano’s Extended UTXO accounting model – built to support multi-assets and smart contracts][1] that discusses the difference between two models. For a more in depth comparison, I recommend the [UTxO- vs account-based smart contract blockchain programming paradigms][2] paper. To sum UTXO up: - A UTXO is the output of a previous transaction, which can be spent in the future - UTXO chains have no accounts. Instead, coins are stored as a list of UTXOs, and transactions are created by consuming existing UTXOs and producing new ones in their place - Balance is the sum of UTXOs controlled by a given address - UTXOs resemble cash in that they use ‘change’, and are indivisible (UTXOs are used whole) To sum up the Account/Balance model: - This accounting model resembles how a bank operates - Users have accounts that hold their coin balance - It is possible to spent partial balances - The concept of change does not apply [1]: https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/03/11/cardanos-extended-utxo-accounting-model/ [2]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.14271.pdf