Ceramic: The Dataweb for Open Apps

Ceramic is a global, general purpose, document-based (?) data storage network (?) for securely publishing, linking, and querying verifiable information on the public internet. -- Does Ceramic actually STORE data, or is it just distributing data fragments to (decentralized) data storage systems?

Build with Ceramic

Clay devnet is now live for experimentation. Fire livenet will launch late 2020.

Development: js-ceramic is a monorepo that contains everything you need to build with the Ceramic TypeScript/JavaScript client either directly in-browser or server-side over an HTTP daemon.
Infrastructure: Clayground (coming soon) allows you to easily spin-up the entire suite of Ceramic infrastructure for development and testing purposes.
Tools: Ceramic Studio is a collection of community-built projects that simplify Ceramic development and use, such as decentralized identitication (DID) providers for wallets (IdentityWallet), in-browser user authentication systems (3ID Connect), identifier management libraries (IDX), identidier management GUIs (coming soon), and more.
Docs: For a deep dive on the internals of the Ceramic Protocol, read the Technical Specification.

Join the community

Chat: Join the Discord for questions and discussions.
Calendar: Add the calendar to attend Community Calls and Core Devs Calls.
Twitter: Follow @CeramicNetwork for official updates.
Newsletter: Subscribe to the Neweletter to receive recaps of activity.
Youtube: Watch videos about Ceramic on our Youtube channel.

Moving the world's data beyond the cloud.

The internet wasn’t built with a native data ____ (?) layer. HTTP database servers have centralized information and power amongst a limited number of for profit companies and resulted in a web of silos ____ rather than a web of data. From decentralized identity to censorship-resistant social media and cross-platform collaboration, many new use cases require a solution for managing dynamic data on the open internet, beyond the control of any single DB server. By combining DIDs, IPFS, blockchains, and p2p networking, Ceramic provides a secure, collaborative, global network for managing user and app data beyond the cloud.

Learn more by reading the full Ceramic Introduction.

Smart Document Graph

Smart documents are the most powerful way to manage information on the open web. Ceramic stores data in a graph of JSON-like documents on a public, permissionless network. Smart documents are an extremely general-purpose way to model and consume data that also enables the programmability of information.

Rich JSON documents

Store data as JSON documents like a NoSQL DB
Set metadata such as owners and tags
Create separate documents for JSON schemas and reference the schema inside your document. Schemas are automatically enforced by the protocol.

Strong security and verifiability

Documents are immutable, append-only logs of linked IPFS records that are signed by the owner’s DID for verifiability and anchored in a blockchain for strict ordering.
Documents are identified by a DocID, which never changes. DocIDs are deterministically generated from the hash of the genesis record.
Record content can be backed up to any type of data warehouse, such as decentralized storage (i.e. Filecoin) or cloud databases (i.e. SQL server).

Programmable smart (?) logic

Define custom rules for state transitions to enforce who, how, and when your document is updated without centralized servers. Rules can react to direct events such as a signature from the owner, or indirect events such as an update in another document.
Hooks can invoke external code or business logic

Linked content graph

Access a worldwide graph of linked information
Build relationships between Ceramic documents by referencing the DocID of other documents
Use Ceramic documents as a metadata, discovery, and routing layer for off-network data by publishing schemas, definitions, and endpoints

Flexible deployment options

Run Ceramic on the cloud or locally in-browser
Backup data to any decentralized storage network or cloud database
Timestamp document updates in any blockchain
Install plugins for node extensibility

Read the full Ceramic Technical Specification.

Store your most critical data natively on the internet.

Decentralized identifier network: Ceramic can be used as a flexible, cross-platform decentralized identification graph complete with DIDs, identity metadata such as profiles, linked crypto and social accounts, following lists, user data indexes, and much more.

Data storage backend: Improve information security, ship faster, and eliminate the need to configure and run database servers for storing user and application data. Ceramic documents offer capabilities similar to your favorite NoSQL document store.

Trusted media and content publishing: From blog posts and social media to media files, Ceramic provides a public infrastructure for publishing content where it can be discovered, versions can be managed, authorship can be verified, and links never change.

Schema management: Create a single source of truth for schemas, dictionaries, and other shared definitions in a trusted public context where the information can be discovered by anyone, versions can be managed, and no server is required.

Collaborate on a global scale.

Ceramic’s verifiable (?) dataweb brings discoverability, integrity, and composability to the world’s information. Openly join the network to publish information and access a vast amount of data resources to use when building your product.

Global discoverability: Discover and access a world of information resources on one global network.
Single source of truth: Every document has a verifiable and publicly auditable state.
Horizontal scalability: Scale to meet the demands of the world’s data at low cost and high speed.
Decentralized network: Our network is completely censorship-resistant and free of middlemen.
Content composability: Reference and build on existing content in ways not possible with siloed servers.
Flexible identity: Transact using any DID. DIDs work with any crypto wallet or key.

Contribute

New clients

Want to work on a Ceramic implementation in another language? Open an issue in this repository to discuss it with others, find help, and coordinate efforts.

Report bugs and/or issues

To report a bug or issue, open a Github issue on the affected repository.

Propose improvements and/or standards

Ceramic Improvement Proposals (CIPs) is a process for proposing improvements to the core Ceramic protocol or use case standards. Create a CIP by opening a new issue in the ceramicnetwork/CIP repository.

To propose or contribute other features/improvements that don't fit neatly into the above, such as creating an implementation in another language, open an issue in the ceramicnetwork/ceramic repository.

Create or join working groups

The Ceramic Ecosystem Alliance (CEA) is a grassroots organization that allows community members to self-organize into topic-based working groups. These working groups allow members to closely collaborate on important issues and produce meaningful outcomes, often in the form of CIPs with wide buy-in from the community. The CEA meets every two weeks, and individual working groups meet on their own schedule. Click here to join the CEA and get access to the calendar.

License

MIT

kameir / ceramic