Hello @everyone! The core Ceramic team is constantly working on improving Ceramic developer tools. With that, as we build better, more efficient tools like ComposeDB, at times we have to deprecate tools that don’t meet the user experience and security standards we aim to meet, and create a significant overhead for the team to maintain.
Today, we are announcing the deprecation of a suite of IDX tools: self.id, glaze, DID DataStore, 3ID, 3id-datastore, TileDocuments and Caip10Link. If you are using any of these tools for your projects, please check the information below to learn what this means to you and what alternatives you can consider.
What exactly is being deprecated?
From now on, the IDX suite tools listed below are deprecated (i.e. these tools still exist, but we highly advise against using them for active development as they will not be maintained by the core Ceramic team going forward):
Public GitHub repos for these tools will be archived.
Why are these tools being deprecated?
Each of these tools have their own individual set of shortcomings (e.g. 3ID wasn’t meeting the UX and security standards we want to meet, self.id and glaze haven’t been maintained for a long time). Overall, these tools are being deprecated in favour of providing developers with better, well-maintained and secure alternatives like ComposeDB while at the same time reducing the overhead that the core Ceramic team has to maintain the outdated set of tools.
Is the team planning to completely sunset these tools?
At the moment all of these tools are deprecated, meaning that developers can use them for their applications, but we highly recommend against that unless absolutely necessary, because the core Ceramic team will no longer actively maintain and provide technical support for these developers tools.
While we don’t have exact dates set just yet, it is very likely that some of these tools will be sunsetted (and thus become fully unusable) with the next release of Ceramic.
My project uses one or more of these tools. What should I do?
If your project uses any of the deprecated tools, we highly recommend migrating your application to ComposeDB, which is a more sophisticated data storage offering by Ceramic.
In most cases, migration means that your application data will have to be left behind and you will have to start fresh.
For apps that use a user-controlled key (such as a did:pkh tied to the user’s blockchain wallet), migrating the old data is possible but quite a bit more complex. If you are in this situation and would like help understanding the migration options available to you, please reach out to the Ceramic core development team here, on Ceramic forum.
I have a big project that is using these tools. How can I get support?
If you need help migrating your project to ComposeDB or pick the best path forward, the core Ceramic team is here to help you out. To get support, reply to this post with your project specifications and the core Ceramic team members will get back to you.