Going beyond social
Our mission is evolving!
Driven by partner feedback and a new role as core developer in the Ceramic ecosystem, Orbis is expanding its focus beyond social.
While social will always be a special focus for Orbis, we are expanding our infrastructure to work with any use cases. Based on conversations with our community of developers, it became clear that Orbis’ capabilities were needed for data beyond the social scope. This inspired us to take everything good about Orbis and expand on it to build a Ceramic-powered database capable of handling open data for every use case!
Introducing OrbisDB
Just as blockchains like Ethereum have multiple client implementations, we believe that decentralized data networks should have multiple database implementations. In partnership with Ceramic, we introduce OrbisDB: a practical, scalable solution for storing and managing open data.
OrbisDB is a database solution with a developer-friendly interface to explore your data with the ease of SQL and a plugin store to save development time on crypto-specific features; from data migration and gating mechanisms to automated blockchain interaction.
OrbisDB’s core component is dedicated to read/write functions of the indexing service. It also listens to stream changes for specific models being used by developers and indexes the content in a Postgres database.
Orbis has developed a new SDK, adopting an ORM-like approach. We took inspiration from Web2 SDKs from solutions like Supabase/PostgREST, Knex, MongoDB, etc., so as a developer, you’ll interact with a familiar and flexible framework: insert, update and select. We envision a future where all developers will interact with Ceramic using well-known languages (SQL, ORM, etc.).
Plugins: a new opportunity in the Ceramic ecosystem
OrbisDB instances can be enhanced with Plugins: hooks that enable different actions during a stream’s lifecycle. They are optional and designed to perform operations beyond the core’s scope. They are divided into 4 categories:
generateto Create streams: Automatically create new streams based on external data sources (ie. blockchain event, a local CSV file or an API data source).add_metadatato Add metadata: Modifies or enhances the stream content before indexing (ie. classify the content using AI, fetch the ENS name of the stream’s controller).validateto Validate / Gate: Checks the stream details and decides whether it should be indexed or not (for moderation, token gating or sybil resistance).post_processto Perform an action: Performs actions after a stream has been indexed (i.e., send an email or a push notification, trigger a blockchain transaction, etc.).
Plugins expand Ceramic’s capabilities and benefits by easily connecting crypto to verifiable data, accessing existing Ceramic data and potentially computing over it (a reputation system via points).
This is also an incredible opportunity for the Ceramic community to collaborate together. All plugins are open-source and we’ve already released a few templates including token gating, data migration via API data source or CSV, for your inspiration.
We invite all developers to share their ideas and build their own plugins to be accessible to all developers in the Ceramic ecosystem. Access more documentation and examples in our GitHub repo today: GitHub - OrbisWeb3/orbisdb
Composable in the network
OrbisDB is based on the upcoming Data Feed API developed by Ceramic. Consequently, we are directly connected to the core Ceramic protocol using Model Instance Documents instead of TileDocuments. OrbisDB is now composable with every project building on ComposeDB. We are currently working with Ceramic to achieve full parity in terms of features (e.g missing interfaces for now).
Soon, ComposeDB builders will be able to load their historical data from their data models into their OrbisDB instance allowing them to fully benefit from this new interface.
Join us today!
Today, OrbisDB will be available in beta (whitelist only). To access OrbisDB, please contact us on one of our various channels or reach out to Charles via Telegram (@charleslev).
As of today, OrbisDB is fully open source which means we’re all in this together— so we’re calling on everyone to share feedback or ideas for plugins and to build with us!
You can check all GitHub repositories to access our early documentation + some tutorials and code snippets:
- Official announcement: https://x.com/useOrbis/status/1762503202568892585?s=20
- OrbisDB Software: GitHub - OrbisWeb3/orbisdb
- OrbisDB SDK: GitHub - OrbisWeb3/db-sdk: OrbisDB SDK to create, manage and query open data.
- Tutorial on OrbisDB Plugins: GitHub - OrbisWeb3/orbisdb
We’re excited for you to check it out and receive your early feedback!