Road to Mainnet: The Modular Decentralized Data Layer

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WeaveDB

8 min readFeb 1, 2024

We’re thrilled to present our roadmap to you. This article will highlight our journey since the initial Proof of Concept (PoC) of WeaveDB back in 2022 and will give you a glimpse into our exciting plans.

Back in 2022, our team was working on a decentralized blogging platform for the Japanese market. But then, it hit us: how can we call it decentralized if we’re using a centralized database? And that most web3 dapps rely on centralized databases like Firestore which poses several risks including but not limited to:

The database manager can shut down the service.
The service provider might unpredictably change their pricing models.
Third-party developers often require permission to access APIs.
Risk of personal data breaches.

In addition, a division between web2 and web3 due to data bridges being limited to a great extent makes any offchain data inaccessible onchain and web3 missing a great wide variety of use cases.

On a Database Level

We introduced WeaveDB for the first time in September 2022 here as a NoSQL Monolithic Smart Contract Database to replace Firestore. The PoC had all the features required to build a fully decentralized application such as social media dapps, offering a seamless developer experience similar to using Firestore’s querying language.

However, we soon recognized the limitations of a Monolithic Smart Contract database, particularly in terms of scalability and its capacity to support high-volume dapps.

In 2023, WeaveDB transitioned to a modular approach. This change involved breaking down the system into four key layers — Permanent API, Query Parser, Indexer, and Data Source — enabling the creation of different database types using a single Data Source.

It’s important to note that even though WeaveDB has become modular, our focus for the upcoming year remains solely on NoSQL.

FPJSON

In early 2023, we introduced FPJSON — a JSON-based functional programming language enabling on-chain execution of computational functions within JSON arrays. It serves as the core foundation for various features we provide, including advanced access control rules and on-chain Cron Jobs.

The growing interest in FPJSON extends beyond WeaveDB. And now we’re thrilled to announce that FPJSON 2.0 will be released this year with new features and capabilities.

zkJSON

Our vision has always been clear: a seamless connection between offchain data and blockchains. We just announced the release of Zero Knowledge Provable JSON (zkJSON).

zkJSON is not just about making offchain data accessible; it’s about verifying and legitimizing it onchain, expanding the scope of what’s considered online and verifiable.

Please read the zkJSON Litepaper for more details.

WeaveDB Rollup

WeaveDB in its essence is a SmartWeave (Arweave smart contract) that provides scalability and cost-effectiveness with lazy offchain computation.

However, we realized that a blockchain sequencer is a bottleneck to performance and latency, this is because a sequencer processes transactions in sequence, and a DB must maintain ACID properties with hyper-low latency.

So WeaveDB has developed an L3 rollup to the L2 sequencer (Warp) to the L1 Arweave permanent storage. This way, we can have a centralized node for parallel query executions with high performance and low latency of web2 cloud databases, but still keep full decentralization with L1 verifiability and L2 composability.

WeaveChain Testnet

WeaveDB will be releasing its Rollup Development Kit (RDK) in the first half of 2024 which will allow anyone to set up and manage their own rollup.

The WeaveDB Testnet will be released in the second half of 2024 and offer Managed Rollup as a Service (RaaS).

WeaveDB Rollup and zkJSON can be used to build many data infrastructure solutions, some examples:

Fully Decentralized web2 Alternativse: such as social media dapps.
Indexing Bitcoin on Ethereum: By calculating the Merkle tree and committing its root hash to Ethereum or any EVM chain, zkJSON can be used to generate proofs for any Bitcoin transaction. This means Solidity can directly query any part of Bitcoin’s transaction history using WeaveDB.
Decentralized Finance: with zkJSON, you can fetch and verify financial data from offchain sources. This could be particularly useful for platforms that need to integrate real-world asset prices, interest rates, or credit scores into smart contracts for lending, borrowing, or derivative trading.
Gaming and NFTs: you can verify and import user-generated content or metadata stored offchain. This could include game assets, NFT metadata, or even player statistics and achievements.
Identity Verification and Reputation Systems: you can verify personal information stored offchain without compromising privacy. It can also be used in reputation systems to fetch and verify user ratings or reviews from external sources.
Real Estate and Tokenization: For platforms dealing with real estate tokenization, zkJSON can verify property details, ownership records, and legal documents stored offchain, streamlining the process of buying, selling, or investing in tokenized real estate.

And many more use cases!

If you have any use cases in mind, please feel free to suggest them on our Discord.

WeaveChain Mainnet

WeaveChain is a CosmosSDK-based economic layer to incentivize the decentralization of the app-specific DB rollup network. It’s a Filecoin for decentralized databases. And will be released in 2025.

Fees

Our L3 rollups will run with a reverse gas model, where the rollup operator pays for bundle transactions to L2 (Warp). Rollup operators will be charging for the Arweave storage fee, the rollup operational fee, and additional service fees. The Arweave storage fee is determined by the Arweave protocol, but the other two should be arbitrary by the rollup operator and optimized in the market. That’s exactly what WeaveChain is for, connecting dapps to rollup operators.

WeaveDB can run in many different environments and doesn’t have to be backed by Arweave. So one could implement the rollup backed by IPFS or cloud storage and provide a cheaper infra stack with the trade-off of less decentralization.

$WDB

We would like to clarify that the $WDB token associated with WeaveDB has NOT yet been released. Please exercise caution and be vigilant against potential scams.

The native token of WeaveChain, $WDB, will play a pivotal role in our ecosystem, serving multiple functions:

Staking for Rollup Operators: To become a rollup operator and earn protocol rewards and service fees from dapp developers, a requisite amount of $WDB must be staked. In case an operator engages in misconduct, a portion of their staked $WDB will be subject to slashing. Additionally, in the event of a rollup becoming non-operational, WeaveChain will automatically assign a new operator and transition the L2 WeaveDB contract, ensuring uninterrupted service.
Query Fees by dapps: Dapp developers will be required to pay for their query operations using $WDB. This ensures a sustainable ecosystem where the utility and demand for $WDB are directly tied to the usage and growth of the platform.
Delegation: Token holders will be able to delegate their tokens to Rollup operators and get a portion of query fees collected by them.
Governance: the $WDB token will play a key role in protocol-level decision-making. More on this later.

As WeaveDB is the only technology to build fully decentralized feature-rich dapps, there will be thousands of app-specific WeaveDB rollups, so one could start rollup-as-a-service with a unique set of features and trade-offs.

What’s next? WeaveDB Protocols

WeaveDB plans to release two protocols with the aim to break down the data silos of Web2 and redirecting its revenue models to Web3.

Jots Protocol

we announced the alpha release of Jots in 2023 as the ultimate decentralized social network. Jots will be released publicly in 2024.

In addition, we will release Jots Protocol, which is a dapp development framework to build fully decentralized interoperable applications using WeaveDB, DID, and ZKP.

Fully on-chain protocols are not scalable and offchain protocols are not verifiable. Jots protocol takes the best of both sides.

We will release a detailed article explaining the how, why, and when. Make sure to follow us on Medium to stay updated.

WeavePoint

WeavePoint (WPT) is a hyper-scalable programmable Database point token protocol backed by the WeaveChain native token ($WDB) to scale the value exchange in dapps. With WPT, dapps will have a seamless way to collect fees from the users for permanent sustainability. We believe that WPT will replace ERC20 tokens for many use cases because:

ERC20 tokens are owned by users, whereas WeavePoints are owned by the protocol. The DB rules define arbitrary token transfers without the user’s approval.
ERC20 is limited by the constraints of EVM.
DB developers can implement a sustainable fee collection mechanism with WeavePoint and auto-pay the rollup fees.
MyDB point will be exchangeable with YourDB point via the DEX for interoperability and network effects if both DBs allow to do so.

Additionally, WeaveDB has an exciting roadmap ahead, with plans to launch a suite of developer tools in 2024 and 2025 to make the developer experience as seamless as possible. This includes WeaveDB Tools, WeaveDB Scan, and several other resources. Stay tuned for more updates by following us on Medium, where we’ll share detailed information about these upcoming releases.

About WeaveDB

While web3 dapps may use decentralized technologies like blockchain to facilitate trust and transparency, they may still rely on centralized components like databases for storing data. This can lead to a certain level of centralization, as these components are often controlled by a single entity or organization.

WeaveDB is addressing this issue by offering a high-performance, scalable, decentralized, and reliable database solution.