Equilibrium / Selected work / Orbit-DB

Orbit-DB

A serverless, distributed, peer-to-peer database for the distributed web, built on IPFS.

In production
orbitdb/orbit-db
Client Open source
Ecosystems IPFS
Stack JavaScript
Delivered by Equilibrium Labs (now Equilibrium)

Overview

OrbitDB is a serverless, distributed, peer-to-peer database. It uses IPFS for data storage and IPFS PubSub to sync databases with peers automatically, eventually consistent, using Merkle-CRDTs for conflict-free merges.

IPFS gave us distributed block storage and peer-to-peer primitives; the open problem was mutability. OrbitDB answers it: using CRDTs for replication and consensus, it achieves strong eventual consistency across a peer-to-peer network, with no blockchain required. Maintained in part by Equilibrium.