OrbitDB
OrbitDB is a serverless, distributed, peer-to-peer database. OrbitDB uses IPFS as its data storage and Libp2p Pubsub to automatically sync databases with peers. It's an eventually consistent database that uses Merkle-CRDTs for conflict-free database writes and merges making OrbitDB an excellent choice for p2p and decentralized apps, blockchain applications and local-first web applications.
OrbitDB provides various types of databases for different data models and use cases:
- events: an immutable (append-only) log with traversable history. Useful for "latest N" use cases or as a message queue.
- documents: a document database to which JSON documents can be stored and indexed by a specified key. Useful for building search indices or version controlling documents and data.
- keyvalue: a key-value database just like your favourite key-value database.
- keyvalue-indexed: key-value data indexed in a Level key-value database.
All databases are implemented on top of OrbitDB's OpLog, an immutable, cryptographically verifiable, operation-based conflict-free replicated data structure (CRDT) for distributed systems. OpLog is formalized in the paper Merkle-CRDTs. You can also easily extend OrbitDB by implementing and using a custom data model benefitting from the same properties as the default data models provided by the underlying Merkle-CRDTs.
Project status & support
- Status: in active development
- Compatible with ipfs-core versions >= 0.18.0
NOTE! js-ipfs and related packages are now superseded by IPFS's Helia project and are no longer being maintained. As part of this migration, OrbitDB will be soon switching to Helia.
This is the Javascript implementation and it works both in Browsers and Node.js with support for Linux, OS X, and Windows. Node version 16 is supported.
A Go implementation is developed and maintained by the Berty project at berty/go-orbit-db.