🌲Background

Since the development of Web3 storage is still in its early stages, a large number of Web3 applications still choose to store data on centralized servers or cloud services. Unfortunately, centralized systems pose risks such as single points of failure, data loss, privacy leakage, etc. Glacier believes that the decentralized storage of Web3 is now taking shape. With the improvement of storage infrastructure, more and more Web3 developers will choose to store data in decentralized storage protocols.

With the development of Web3 storage, the underlying file storage protocol has gradually been adopted by many Web3 developers. However, since the underlying distributed storage protocols, such as Arweave and IPFS, can only store static files, developers only get a storage file ID. This cannot meet the requirements of structured storage, query and data modification.

Web3’s data is fully accessible on the blockchain and is of great value. User data created and recorded by Web3 DApps is also one of the greatest assets for Web3 devs. Web3 developers should develop new applications based on related data and generate essential business insights, but it is fundamentally impossible for Web3 developers to achieve this right now due to the following challenges:

• Poor Data Accessibility: Today, Web3 data is locked in different decentralized storage files, which prevents full visibility of data to the developers. This leads to poor customer experience, missing insights, and slower app development.

• Lack of Agility: Demands for faster and easier deployment to the fast-moving Web3 markets and higher productivity are held back by the extremely unfriendly storage environment and rigid relational data models that exist today.

• Limited Data Support: Web3 developers have limited data support for easily analyzing, querying and monitoring their own user data with different channels like web and mobile.

• High Cost: Expensive fees in decentralized storage, huge jumps in costs as workloads scale, and multi-chain storage management impose barriers to innovation.

Therefore, there is a huge demand for the Web3 database layer, which could provide a fully decentralized database service built for resilience, scale, and the highest levels of data privacy and security in Web3.