The Ceramic Data Network is a decentralized, peer-to-peer network that provides a scalable, secure, and composable platform for storing and sharing data. Built on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and the Ethereum blockchain, the Ceramic Data Network allows users to create and manage verifiable, tamper-evident records that can be shared and accessed by anyone with the appropriate permissions.

## **Understanding Ceramic**

One of the key features of the Ceramic Data Network is its composability. This means that the network is designed to be easily integrated with other applications and services, allowing for seamless and interoperable data sharing. This makes the Ceramic Data Network an ideal platform for building complex data-driven applications and services, and for enabling data-driven innovation and collaboration.

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This is being achieved by the schemas or models used as standards for streams created on the network. Ceramic Schemas are simple JSON rules that developers must follow when sharing content with a specific schema. It’s like the ERC721 or ERC20 standards on Ethereum but for the entire internet instead.

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Another key feature of the Ceramic Data Network is its support for data ownership. This means that users have the ability to create and manage their own digital identities and to control which information they share and with whom. This gives users more control over their online privacy and allows them to share their data in a way that is secure, transparent, and trustful.

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Additionally, the Ceramic Data Network is highly scalable. Unlike traditional centralized data storage systems, which can become slow and cumbersome as they grow in size, the Ceramic Data Network is designed to be scalable and efficient, even as the amount of data on the network increases. This allows the network to support a wide range of applications and use cases, from simple file sharing to complex data management and governance.

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Finally, the Ceramic Data Network is decentralized, meaning that there is no central authority that controls or manages the network. This allows for a more open, transparent, and fair online community, where users have the ability to contribute to the network and to have a say in how it is run. It also means that the network is resistant to censorship and other forms of centralized control, which can help to foster a more open and inclusive internet.

## **What is ComposeDB from Ceramic?**

ComposeDB is a distributed database system that is built on top of the Ceramic Data Network, it extends the capabilities of the Ceramic Data Network by providing a powerful, easy-to-use database system that allows users to store, query, and update data on the network using simple GraphQL queries. ComposeDB will allow developers to query Ceramic content very easily without having to build their own indexing system.

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One of the key features of ComposeDB is its scalability, it inherits the network's ability to scale efficiently and support a large number of users and data records. This makes ComposeDB an ideal platform for applications that require the ability to store and manage large amounts of data, such as social networks, messaging apps, or e-commerce platforms. \n 

Another key feature of ComposeDB is its ease of use, when fully ready, ComposeDB will provide a simple, intuitive interface that allows developers and users to easily retrieve and manage data on the network.

## **Conclusion**

In conclusion, the Ceramic Data Network is a decentralized, peer-to-peer network that provides a scalable, secure, and composable platform for storing and sharing data. With its support for data ownership, composability, and decentralization, the Ceramic Data Network has the potential to revolutionize the way we store, share, and access data online.

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It’s at the core of our infrastructure at Orbis.

Learn more about the Ceramic Data Network, a new peer-to-peer network that provides a scalable, secure, and composable platform for storing and sharing data.

What is the Ceramic Data Network?

Web3 social networks, also known as decentralized social networks, are a new type of social media platform based on blockchain technology or decentralized, peer-to-peer networks. Unlike traditional social media platforms, which are controlled by a centralized authority, web3 social networks are built on open, transparent, and immutable systems that give users more control over their data and interactions.

## The Benefits of Web3 Social Media

One of the key benefits of web3 social networks is that they offer a more trusted and open internet experience. Because these platforms are decentralized, users can be confident that their data and interactions will not be censored or manipulated by a central authority. Additionally, the use of blockchain technology ensures that user data is secure and cannot be easily hacked or stolen.

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Another benefit of web3 social networks is that they give users more control over their data and privacy. Traditional social media platforms often collect and monetize user data without their consent, but on a web3 social network, users have the ability to choose who can access their data and how it is used. This can help to reduce the amount of data that is collected and shared without users' knowledge or consent, giving users more control over their online experience.

Web3 social networks also have the potential to create a more open and transparent internet. Because these platforms are built on open, decentralized systems, users can see exactly how the platform works and can even contribute to its development. This can help to foster a more collaborative and inclusive online community, where users have a greater say in how the platform is run and how their data is used.

## Web3 Social to Improve the Creators Economy

One of the most exciting potential benefits of decentralized social media is its ability to improve the creator economy. On traditional social media platforms, content creators often struggle to monetize their work and are at the mercy of the platform's algorithms and policies. This can make it difficult for creators to earn a fair return on their work and can lead to a lack of incentive for creators to continue producing high-quality content.

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Decentralized social networks, on the other hand, provide new opportunities for content creators to monetize their work. Because these platforms are built on blockchain technology, creators can use cryptocurrency and other decentralized financial tools to directly monetize their content. This allows creators to have more control over their income and to potentially earn a higher return on their work.

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Additionally, decentralized social networks can help to create a more transparent and fair creator economy. Because these platforms are decentralized and open, users can see exactly how the platform works and can even contribute to its development. This can help to foster a more collaborative and inclusive online community, where users have a greater say in how the platform is run and how their data is used.

## Decentralized Social Media offer Data Ownership to users

Another advantage of decentralized social media is that it gives users ownership of their data. On traditional social media platforms, users often have little control over the data that they share and how it is used. This can lead to the collection and misuse of user data without their consent, as well as a lack of transparency about how user data is collected and shared.

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Decentralized social networks, on the other hand, give users full ownership of their data. Because these platforms are decentralized, users can choose who can access their data and how it is used. This can help to reduce the amount of data that is collected and shared without users' knowledge or consent, giving users more control over their online experience.

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Additionally, decentralized social media offers the potential for better revenue models that are not tied to advertising. Traditional social media platforms rely heavily on advertising to generate revenue, but this model has a number of drawbacks. For one, it can lead to a cluttered and distracting user experience, as users are bombarded with ads in their feed. Additionally, advertising revenue is often distributed unevenly, with a small number of top creators receiving the majority of the revenue.

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Decentralized social networks, on the other hand, offer the potential for alternative revenue models that are not tied to advertising. Because these platforms are built on a blockchain or a decentralized data network, users can use cryptocurrency and other decentralized financial tools to directly monetize their content. This allows users to have more control over their income and to potentially earn a higher return on their work.

## A more Trusted and Open Internet with Web3 Social

In conclusion, web3 social networks offer a more trusted and open internet experience, giving users more control over their data and interactions, and fostering a more collaborative and inclusive online community.

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Additionally, these platforms have the potential to improve the creator's economy by providing new ways for content creators to monetize their work. As these platforms continue to evolve and gain adoption, they have the potential to create a more transparent, secure, and decentralized internet for everyone.

A new type of decentralized protocol is emerging under the Web3 Social name. Let's dive into what those decentralized social media protocols are as well as their benefits.

Understanding Web3 Social and its Benefits

Got a great idea for decentralized social? Build it now during The Web3 Social Hackathon and learn about leading web3 technologies at the same time. From December 1st to December 31st, you’ll have nine different challenges with endless possibilities and an amazing prize pool of $50,000. Find more information about the hackathon bounties [here](https://orbis.club/web3-social-hackathon-dec-2022).

In this blog post, our goal is to share some thought-starters on what you could build. In the end, it’s up to you to decide, but we hope the ideas below will illustrate some of the great possibilities using our partners’ technology and the Orbis solution.

## Some ideas to build…

### **A web3 Twitter platform (without bots…)**

Are you tired to be spammed on Twitter by bot or fake profiles? You can build a simple alternative during The Web3 Social Hackathon. Leverage the **[Orbis SDK](https://orbis.club/documentation)** to develop a Twitter feed in few lines of code, with all web3 benefits. To avoid bots or accept only “humans”, you can allow users with an active **[Gitcoin Passport](https://github.com/gitcoinco/passport)**, with specific verifiable credentials like Bright ID or Proof of Humanity. You can also leverage **[Krebit](https://docs.krebit.id/)** reputations based on verifiable credentials too. To make this happen, you have a very useful function in the Orbis SDK to query all verifiable credentials for a specific DID (user identity): **[get credentials()](https://orbis.club/documentation/api-documentation/getCredentials)**.

You can even recreate the “famous” poll from Elon Musk in a fully decentralized way thanks to the **Vocdoni solution**. Of course, you could combine this with a verifiable credential, again to prevent bots from participating in it.

Quick Orbis SDK tips to build your project, the social feed could be developed as a specific channel which will be gated using Verifiable Credentials by using the `vcAccessRules` object when creating or updating a channel, **[documentation here](https://orbis.club/documentation/api-documentation/createChannel)**.

### **A decentralized platform for content creators…**

Out of 50 million creators, only 2 million can actually make a living from their work. It means that more than 48 million do not generate sufficient revenue from the amazing content they create. This problem is a huge opportunity for web3 to solve - could creators own their audience and content as well as generating a new income? How to build this new world?

**[Orbis SDK](https://orbis.club/documentation)** makes it easy to build fast and decentralized social features such as a social network (like Instagram) or a community server (like Discord) that enable all web3 benefits - data ownership and composability. You could combine Orbis with **[Unlock Protocol](https://docs.unlock-protocol.com/)** to generate a subscription model for those creators. For example, fans could buy a time-bound NFT easily and access exclusive content. This content could be a video or a livestream, uploaded and processed easily via **[Livepeer](https://livepeer.notion.site/Livepeer-Hacker-Quick-Start-Guide-ac60d083dbcd4c10b8a077145d315c88)**, a decentralized video infrastructure.

### **A communications platform for a web3 game…**

As we are experiencing today, social networks can be many places other than Twitter or Discord such as a metaverse or a game. You spend hours on these platforms and make real connections with people. Imagine if you could bridge those spaces together and enable a seamless experiences for gamers?

You could build a chat system in a game for players to discuss with each other thanks to the **[Orbis SDK](https://orbis.club/documentation)**, by making it compatible with Unity (Bounty #6). Then, players could go on a community forum (like an embedded Discord-server) within the game website to continue their discussions with their in-game friends, also build with the **[Orbis SDK](https://orbis.club/documentation)** (bounty #5). We can even imagine, gamers moving away from their computer but still discussing between each other via a messaging app on their phone, developed in react native thanks to the **[Orbis SDK](https://orbis.club/documentation)** (Bounty #9). A fully unified communication experience that will build amazing relationships and could replace a traditional social networks.

### **A fun polling platform to play with your friends… or a useful one…**

If you are following the latest social media trend, you should have seen the [GAS App](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gas/id1641791746) sensation. A mobile app to vote fun questions from your university or high school friends. How about we build it for everyone in a fully web3 way? You could leverage **[Vocdoni SDK](https://developer.vocdoni.io/)** to build a decentralized polling application and decide if only verified users can access it (thanks to the Verifiable Credentials). **[Orbis SDK](https://orbis.club/documentation)** can be useful to add some comments for each poll or enable private messaging between app members.

You could also imagine a voting system in a more useful application such as an open hackathon platform that lets members decide which new bounties could be posted, and/or vote for which developers will be rewarded. **[Vocdoni SDK](https://developer.vocdoni.io/)** can be extremely useful to build this voting system and **[Orbis SDK](https://orbis.club/documentation)** would enable social interactions within the hackathon platform.

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In the end, you are free to build what it matters for you - so explore all solutions that are part of this hackathon and build awesome projects that will push the boundaries of web3 social.

Happy Hackathon!

Interested to build but no concrete ideas yet? Let's deep dive on few thought-starters for The Web3 Social Hackathon and learn about leading web3 technologies at the same time. From December 1st to December 31st, you’ll have nine different challenges with endless possibilities and an amazing prize pool of $50,000!

What to build for The Web3 Social Hackathon?

## We today announced the integration of Verifiable Credentials in the Orbis SDK and Orbis app. 

Profiles can now be associated with, and display, credentials issued by both Gitcoin Passport and Krebit. This new feature allows social applications built on Orbis to call and use Verifiable Credentials in their services. It is an important step in countering bots and increasing sybil resistance across all social experiences. 

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Use cases of the new Orbis integration include personalization of access based on verifiable identity attestations like verified Discord profiles, Twitter followers, ENS or Proof of Humanity. The credentials are also a secure and private way for individuals to demonstrate KYC attributes or qualifications, while controlling access to their full identity online. This has valuable applications across most verticals, from social recruitment platforms and education providers, to DeFi integration and DAOs.

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 ![](https://orbis.mypinata.cloud/ipfs/QmcxeMUNvS7LU9fsdT6dyxNBkqYXU4nhxtUMLtwUMBRgud)

## How to start building with Verifiable Credentials

The Orbis SDK now has a new function to query the verifiable credentials attached to a DID: getCredentials(). We’ve already updated our documentation to include this function to make it fast and easy to start building. You can find the documentation [here](https://orbis.club/documentation/api-documentation/getCredentials). 

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We’re excited to see how our community uses this integration of Verifiable Credentials. With Orbis Protocol’s social data standards and powerful decentralized infrastructure, they enable the next generation of decentralized, personalized and sybil-resistant social experiences.

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## More about Gitcoin Passport

Gitcoin Passport is an app that allows you to verify your identity without giving away your personal data. It works much the same as a traditional travel ID; online identifiers (both web2 and web3), such as Twitter, Google, BrightID and Proof of Humanity make up what we call ‘stamps.’ These are all aggregated into Passport’s platform, which connects to decentralized apps to validate a user's online identity.

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Passport allows you to create a digital identity, prove your humanity, and cross-pollinate your identity wherever you travel in the online universe — all without storing personally identifiable information. With each stamp you collect, you are providing proof that you are who you say you are, making it the most secure way to build a trustworthy, decentralized profile to navigate the open web.

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To find out more, visit [gitcoin.co/passport](https://gitcoin.co/passport)

Learn about how [Gitcoin Passport was built on Ceramic here.](https://blog.ceramic.network/gitcoin-builds-passport-on-ceramic/)

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## More about Krebit

Krebit helps you import and own your reputation so you can earn with your talent everywhere. In their community of web3 professionals, you can build your portable ‘reputation passport’ for better job matching and token-gating, without revealing any private information.

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Start your web3 professional career by importing your existing web2 reputation including Github and Stackoverflow, then use those credentials to join communities in Orbis or Guild. You can also apply for web3 bounties in Dework, Spect and more.

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Krebit believes in decentralization of reputation for making the web more trustworthy, meritocratic and privacy-preserving. “Own your #reputation, earn with your #talent”.

For more information visit [krebit.id](https://krebit.id/)

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## Questions about building with Verifiable Credentials?

You can connect directly with the Orbis team in our [Developers Community here](https://app.orbis.club/group/kjzl6cwe1jw14ai2gg8e0qmx2j944ppe3s3dgfk003jlb8guuybyg4m77nsrg73).

Announcing the integration of web3 Verifiable Credentials in Orbis SDK and Orbis app. For sybil resistance in decentralized social media experiences. 

Orbis Integrates Verifiable Credentials to Enable Sybil-Resistant Social Experiences

Head of Marketing, Orbis.
DMs always open for ideas, collabs, updates on your project. 

## **A new generation of social applications**

The ‘social’ element of social media has always been more about people than code. We want to interact with people we care about, we want insights into the lives of people we’re interested in, and perhaps we even want to cultivate our own online profile and image. 

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Now, a new generation of apps are promising new ways for this social content to be created, stored, indexed, curated, and sold. Based on web3 technologies, they envision new ways in which we’ll live out our online lives. Many offer the comforts of popular web2 social media apps - posts, likes, sharing and followers - and often use similar aesthetics and features that make it simple for new users to pick up and experiment.

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For now, these new web3 apps and protocols exist at various points on the spectra of decentralization, composability, and financialization. However, they all offer users three key experiences that set them apart from their web2 counterparts and define what ‘web3 social’ will offer to us all.

## **Experience #1 - Sign in with your web3 identity**

This is not your grandmother’s Facebook account. It’s also much more than getting a Metamask pop up and clicking ‘Sign’. In web2 social apps, signing in with your account gives you access to create and interact with content from a specific identity. In web3 you are connecting your social identity to all of the value you create and consume online. 

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Web2 social media is infamous for its fake depictions of glamorous lifestyles and contrived moments. Web3 introduces new concepts like provable digital ownership, blockchain-based reputation systems and verified credentials. These provide new layers of context which allow web3 users to communicate more authentically and verify the claims of others. 

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Some web2 platforms have dabbled in this (think NFTs on Instagram), but only in carefully selected niches and on the platforms’ terms. As web3 concepts like verified credentials become reality and give users more granular control over the data they share, there will be increasing ways to curate our online identities - from displaying our memberships and our assets, to sharing  community contributions and connections. Making the connection between your wallet address or web3 identity and your social activity unlocks a future that’s  more open, more composable and more authentic. 

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## **Experience #2 - Make the switch between social platforms** 

The experience of leaving one social platform and joining another is today one of a ‘fresh start’. Each time you must start with a clean slate. Perhaps you’ll use a recognizable username that carries some sort of reputation, but you must leave all your content, your connections, and your history behind. 

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The giants of web2 social media don’t want you to take your attention elsewhere. For their business model to work they need you where they can show you ads and extract useful data from your online activity. They accomplish this by holding your experience hostage, knowing you can’t simply switch to a different app and experience the same content, interact with the same connections or leverage the same profile. What if you could? 

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This is such a paradigm shift that it almost has to be experienced to be understood. Imagine downloading a different app because you prefer its interface or it has a unique feature, and having instant access to your profile and connections. You can continue to engage with your friends without skipping a beat, regardless of what app they chose for themselves. 

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I liken this shift to a transition from two-dimensional walled cities to three-dimensional planets. At the heart of each planet is a rich core of data. Users are free to roam across a boundary-less surface and drill down into this shared data resource from wherever and for whatever reason they choose. 

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This dynamic may give rise to a new generation of ‘social nomads’ who continually move onto new applications and maintain a library of different apps for different social use cases. Web3 social drives switching costs to zero, and the impact of this on the user experience, as well as how future apps will attract and retain users, is only just being explored. 

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## **Experience #3 - Take Everything With You** 

Web3 forces some tough debate when it comes to censorship, content moderation, and community management. For a protocol to be legitimately considered as part of the web3 social movement, it needs to be as open as possible. 

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The average web3 user is probably still more likely to simply walk away and start afresh if their account is restricted or blocked, but web3 opens the possibility of  direct interactions with smart contracts, or creating their own alternate front end. The existence of these alternative options fundamentally changes the dynamic between apps and their users. 

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This openness goes hand-in-hand with the ability to migrate content, profile features and followers across apps and between front-ends. A ‘de-platformed’ YouTuber is forced to start anew. They may be able to upload all of the same content elsewhere, but their data, comments, subscribers (in essence the very heart and identity of their community) are lost. The beauty of building on the surface of a web3 social planet rather than a web2 walled city is the ability to simply migrate and reconnect from a new location, and no one is able to stop you. Again, this opens essential new conversations on social legislation and optimum moderation.

## **Where to find web3 social experiences today**

Web3 social is a new movement, in large part driven by the creation of new technologies called social protocols. These provide the infrastructure needed for web3 social ownership, content sharing and connection - the web3 social planet beneath the new generation of applications.

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Orbis Protocol, the web3 social protocol built for developers, is one of these solutions. It’s the foundation for a rapidly growing web3 ecosystem of applications and social features.  And it’s the perfect place to get your first taste of the web3 social experience.


Sign into <https://app.orbis.club> to see the features available via Orbis Protocol. This link takes you to the Orbis Club App, which showcases the experiences available in the protocol. It’s also home to an active community of developers building the future of web3 social.


The open-source nature and composability of web3 social protocols like Orbis are already adding a new dimension to the social media user experience.This will enrich over time as users migrate their connections and attention to these fairer, more open social platforms.


As a developer you can already start to use the Orbis SDK to build any decentralized social experience. The best place to start is our documentation: <https://orbis.club/documentation>.

 \n 

Orbis community manager Adam Dawson explores three key differences between web2 and web3 social applications, and asks what the new social experiences will offer to us all.

Three differences between web2 and web3 social media applications

Community Manager @ Orbis. Here to help usher in the decentralized, open source future of online social interaction. 

In 2022, there are different options on the table to build a decentralized social protocol / network or decentralized social graph. In this post, I will explain what those different options are and why we decided to use Ceramic to build Orbis Protocol.

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**The main three options on the table are:**

* Use smart contracts with a decentralized data storage network 
* Create your own blockchain or network dedicated to your social protocol 
* Use an advanced data network like Ceramic

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## 1. Using smart contracts with a decentralized data storage network

This is the option that we initially explored to build the very first proof of concept for Orbis and it’s the option picked by Lens Protocol for example. In this option, you use a set of smart contracts to store the posts, reactions, followers and profiles and store the content of the posts and profiles on a decentralized data storage system such as Arweave or IPFS.

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**Important:** In this option, posts themselves aren’t stored on the blockchain itself. Only the hash / url of the content is stored on-chain. 

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There are some advantages using an architecture like this but also some big drawbacks. 

### Advantages of the smart contract approach 

The main advantage is that using solidity and smart contracts is a well-known environment for teams already used to DeFi or NFT projects. This allows some quick composability and integrations with other apps. 

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A second big advantage is that there are many solutions available to index and query blockchain data, tools like The Graph for example. So as soon as your smart contracts are deployed and used, anyone could create a subgraph to query the content being shared on your decentralized social network. This then makes it easier to integrate the content in an application. 

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A third advantage (which also introduces our first drawback) is that with new chains like Polygon or Layer 2s like Optimism or Arbitrum transaction fees can be fairly cheap. This is an advantage because with this approach, all posts require a transaction via the smart contract.

### Drawbacks of the smart contract approach 

However, even with cheap fees, the smart contract approach means that every transaction in a social experience comes with a cost. For us, this was a major first drawback. We believe that a social networking experience can’t come with end-users transaction fees. Instead, it must be absolutely free to use for everyone.

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A second drawback is related to the friction of having to sign a transaction every time you perform an action on this type of social network. Every action such as following someone, sharing something or reacting to a post requires a signature. Web 2 platforms have been excellent at removing any type of friction from their applications. Web3 platforms must do the same to succeed. 

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Another disadvantage is that expanding to other chains is hard for a social network built fully on-chain. It’s easy to duplicate and deploy the smart contracts on another chain but they are still going to be two separate experiences. Maybe some apps will find ways so that someone who created their account on Polygon can follow an Optimism user, but it’s not going to be easy and will probably rely on centralized bridges. It will also be even harder to have this cross-chain experience for non EVM chains. For example, can a Polygon user interact with a Solana user on this type of decentralized social network? 

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Overall, I strongly believe that traditional blockchains are amazing at solving the double-spending problem, to transfer an asset from point A to point B and to allow full ownership of your financial assets. However they aren’t a good architecture to build a decentralized social network.

## 2. Building everything from scratch

To avoid the drawbacks listed above, one could be tempted to build their own blockchain or decentralized architecture dedicated to the social network. This is what DeSo or Farcaster decided to do, for example. I’ve never considered this an option but I guess the main advantage would be the flexibility it offers. If you build from scratch you can decide on the rules and parameters of your blockchain or network to fit your needs perfectly. 

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One other advantage would be the ability to capture value at the network level. It’s clear that building or forking a blockchain or decentralized network can be a lucrative business (at least in the short-term). #Disadvantages of building your own blockchain or network 

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The main disadvantage is, in my opinion, the intensive and duplicated technical work and maintenance required. As importantly, by building your custom blockchain or network you lose out on the composability gained by building on top of an existing public decentralized infrastructure. 

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Another disadvantage could be the lack of initial decentralization. In addition to building both a blockchain and a social network, you also need to convince node operators to run your new blockchain to make it decentralized.

## 3. Use an advanced data network like Ceramic

Finally, let’s talk about Ceramic. I’m going to be biased here because this is the technical architecture we chose for Orbis. I strongly believe that this is the best choice for data-intensive web3 applications. 

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Ceramic is a decentralized data network built on top of IPFS. With Ceramic users can create their decentralized identity or `DID` using multiple types of providers. A provider can be an Ethereum wallet, a Solana wallet or even a Cosmos wallet. This means that someone joining Orbis with their Solana wallet can talk with another Orbis user who joined with their Ethereum wallet. 

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Once a user creates their Ceramic `DID`, they are able to write Ceramic streams. Creating a new stream is similar to creating and signing a transaction on a blockchain but instead of transferring an asset, you share data to the network. On Orbis, each post, reaction, profile details, or follow action, is a Ceramic stream. Streams are public JSON objects that are replicated across multiple Ceramic nodes. They may follow a specific schema to be identified easily in the network and they can be used by multiple applications. I will share more details about the Ceramic schemas in another post. 

### The advantages of using Ceramic for a social protocol 

The first advantage is definitely the ability to join Ceramic with multiple providers. It is a neutral platform on which to build decentralized data applications. 

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Because Ceramic is dedicated to data and not to financial assets, it doesn’t need the same security model as traditional blockchains. There aren’t any fees or wallet popups when users write content to Ceramic. This frictionless user experience is the third big advantage of Ceramic. 

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Ceramic’s alternative security model also allows very fast write times. A Ceramic stream is created almost immediately which results in a very fast user experience similar to what web2 can offer. 

### The disadvantages of using Ceramic 

The main disadvantage of Ceramic is that its architecture, and decentralization are different from those of traditional blockchains. End-users probably won’t be concerned about these differences, but for technical people there are new concepts to learn. This can create a small barrier to entry both for developers and early adopters. 

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Another current disadvantage for Ceramic (which is only temporary) is that there isn’t any way to publicly query and index Ceramic content. For example, Ceramic needs what The Graph did for blockchains; the ability to query blockchain data using a simple GraphQL query. No one has done this for Ceramic as yet. 

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This lack of a simple query solution means that apps building on top of Ceramic must run their own indexing architecture in a centralized way. However multiple teams are working on solving this problem, including Ceramic with their own ComposeDB product. 

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Finally, as a consequence of all the advantages listed previously, Ceramic is not decentralized in the same way as traditional blockchains. The Ceramic architecture brings huge benefits but it might generate some centralization issues if nodes aren’t incentivized to host other nodes' content. 

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With traditional blockchains, every node hosts the same data and must constantly agree on the state of the network. With Ceramic this is different. Each node hosts different streams according to which apps are connecting to the node and the data the nodes decide to host. For example, we could have many nodes indexing the data from Orbis in a permission-less way, but if we have only the Orbis node doing this it creates some centralization. Having a set of incentives to encourage nodes to host data from other applications would be useful to push this architecture towards decentralization. 

## Conclusion

I believe that decentralized social apps and protocols built on traditional blockchains will benefit from an initial network effect. They leverage an architecture that their audience and developers are used to. Also, because querying or indexing the blockchain is available using a simple subgraph, such solutions benefit from immediate composability. 

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However, in the long run, building on top of Ceramic is, in my opinion, a far better decision. It provides higher scalability, and a neutral cross-chain decentralized social experience. This is the option if, like Orbis, you’re looking to achieve the greatest adoption outside the crypto space. 

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*Note: This article was initially shared on Orbis Testnet in May 2022*

Let's explore today's options for building a decentralized social protocol, and explains why we chose to build Orbis Protocol on Ceramic.

Our articles

What is the Ceramic Data Network?

Understanding Web3 Social and its Benefits

What to build for The Web3 Social Hackathon?

Orbis Integrates Verifiable Credentials to Enable Sybil-Resistant Social Experiences

Three differences between web2 and web3 social media applications

Why we built our Web3 Social Protocol on Ceramic

Contribute articles on web3 social or the decentralization of social media

Join the conversation on the future of social applications

Questions about Orbis Protocol? Ask us.