How Ceramic Works

A composable data ecosystem
built on decentralized
event streams

350M

events

10M

streams

1.5M

accounts

400

apps

Ceramic protocol

Decentralized Event Streams

The Ceramic protocol is a specification for decentralized event streams. On Ceramic, user accounts cryptographically sign data events and then submit them to the network where they are organized into streams. Streams enable data to be published, consumed, exchanged, and reused by any application or device connected to the public internet.

Ceramic is similar in design to Kafka, but is much more powerful as Ceramic extends data beyond a single enterprise and enables composability across the open web.

Accounts

Ceramic accounts are interoperable decentralized identifiers (DIDs) that cryptographically sign data. Supporting integrations with top blockchains, users can connect their blockchain wallet to sign events and grant permissions on Ceramic.

Accounts and permissions

Events

Events are the most atomic units of data in Ceramic. Event messages are stored in the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) using the IPLD protocol and can contain any arbitrary data needed by consumers of the message.

Learn more about events

type InitHeader struct {
    controllers [String]
}
    type InitPayload struct {
        header InitHeader
        data optional Any
    }

type DataHeader struct {
    controllers [String]
}
    type DataEventPayload struct {
        id &InitEvent
        prev &Event
        header optional DataHeader         data Any
    }

type TimeEvent struct
      id &InitEvent
      prev &DataEvent | &InitEvent
      proof Link
      path String
    }

Streams

Once submitted to the network, events are organized into streams. Streams are hash-linked chains of events used for a variety of purposes, such as tracking the changes to a JSON object over time. For example on a social application, a stream can store a post, reaction, profile, or follower.

Learn more about streams

High-Performance
Decentralized Data Infrastructure

Ceramic networks are hyper-scalable data infrastructure networks of nodes operated by the community that provide core utilities for the Ceramic protocol as decentralized web services — including event availability, event ordering, and API hosting. Together, these services enable developers to build fully trust-minimized data applications with Ceramic.

The community runs various networks to support you through different stages of development, from prototyping locally to testing and production.

API Hosting

Every Ceramic node hosts an instance of the Ceramic API to service event storage and query requests from Ceramic clients

Event Availability

The node that services the API request stores the event, applies it to the stream, then distributes it across the entire network where other nodes listen, update or add redundancy

Event Ordering

Anchor nodes periodically roll-up all observed events into a merkle tree and publish the root to the Ethereum blockchain, providing immutable time that enables consensus on the global ordering of Ceramic transactions

Fast, scalable transactions

Unlike financial asset blockchains that rely on slow and unscalable synchronous global state changes, Ceramic uses fast, asynchronous, parallel transaction processing and eventual consistency to enable the scale and throughput needed by the world’s largest data applications.

Low-cost infrastructure

Ceramic has an ecosystem of node operators and can be self-hosted for as little as $5 per month. The network is designed to write high-volume data at an extremely low cost, comparable to traditional data infrastructure.

Secure & Verifiable

Ceramic combines IPFS content addressing with advanced cryptography and blockchain timestamps to guarantee security and verifiability of data.

Ceramic API

Simple,
Powerful Data API

Connect and transact on Ceramic’s data network using a simple API—available in TypeScript and REST.

Read the API docs

const response = await fetch( 'http://localhost:7007/api/v0/streams/kjzl6cw1jw147r7878h32yazawcll6bxe5v92348cxitif6cota91qp68grbhm'
)

const data = await response.json()

curl
http://localhost:7007/api/v0/streams/ kjl6cwe1jw147r7878h32yazawcll6bxe5v9234 8cxitif6cota91qp68grbhm

await fetch( 'http://localhost:7007/api/v0/streams', {
method: 'POST',
headers: {
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
},
body: JSON.stringify({
type: 0,
genesis: {
header: {
family: 'test',
controllers: ['did:key:z6MkfZ6S4NVVTEuts8o5xFzRMR8eC 6Y1bngoBQNnXiCvhH8H'],
},
},
}),
})

curl http://localhost:7007/api/v0/
streams -X POST-d '{
"type": 0,
"genesis": {
"header": {
"family": "test", "controllers"["did:key:z6MkfZ6S4NVVT
Euts8o5xFzRMR8eC6Y1bngoBQNnXiCvhH8H"]
}
}
}' -H "Content-Type: application/json"

Ceramic Ecosystem

Expansive Ecosystem

The Ceramic API powers an ecosystem of interconnected data services and applications built on the same underlying data events.

Data Services

The core consumers of the Ceramic API are developers building trust-minimized, composable data middleware and services. These services interact with Ceramic event streams behind the scenes to solve specific problems for application developers – who in turn use these tools to build their apps.

ComposeDB

Ceramic's composable graph database with endless use cases for Web3 apps like social networks, coordination tooling, knowledge graphs, and identity and reputation protocols.

Go to ComposeDB