The Kwil Mission
To provide the infrastructure to power data storage and retrieval for the next generation of Web 3.0 enabled applications.
Kwil is a decentralized database that enables developers to create and manage permissionless, structured data schemas on a decentralized network. With Kwil, the benefits promised by Web 3.0 are extended to relational data structures, enabling new use cases and user experiences across the decentralized internet.
How Blockchains Enable Permissionless Environments
To fully comprehend the importance of Kwil, it is essential to first understand how blockchains create a permissionless world. Generally, a blockchain is a decentralized network of computers that performs computation and stores data in a shared ledger. Blockchains differ from centralized systems in that:
1. No single person or group controls the blockchain.
2. Everyone in the world has equal access to send commands.
3. The data stored on the blockchain is immutable and tamperproof.
4. All transactions processed over time are recorded in a continuously growing ledger.
Thus, blockchains are secure and reliable systems for storing data–they are permissionless in that users are assured that the rules of the game will not change. When someone interacts with a smart contract, they are assured that the rules of the smart contract will not change. For example, Uniswap V3 is the most recent version of the Uniswap smart contract, but builders can still use Uniswap V1 or V2 if they so choose. Even though the team behind Uniswap made the deliberate decision to make a new version of their product, the old products still exist and function the same as before. Blockchains enable permissionless environments that ensure access and usage is not controlled by a centralized parties.
Permissionless data environments are a critical component of the decentralized internet because they enable all parties to engage with the guarantee that the system will not change. This enables individuals to build products, deliver services, and conduct transactions in a secure, trustless manner. In Web 2.0, this trustless infrastructure does not exist. For example, the sudden restrictions for the public Twitter "firehose" API disrupted many businesses that were built around Twitter data. In the permissioned, Web 2.0 environments, stakeholders are beholden to sudden, often arbitrary actions that run counter to the best interests of the ecosystem. In a permissionless, Web 3.0 environment, stakeholders are able to conduct themselves with the guarantees that the agreed-upon system will not suddenly change.
Problem: Advanced Data Stores Limit Permissionless Environments
Currently in Web 3.0, permissionless data structures are limited in terms of the complexity of data that can be stored. Solutions like Ethereum and Solana allow for basic key value storage. Solutions like Arweave and Filecoin enable unstructured data / file system storage. However, when it comes to managing any type of structured / relational data storage, there is no scalable, cost-efficient decentralized architecture solution. Developers are forced to rely on centralized solutions, ultimately limiting the degree to which their applications can be truly decentralized and permissionless.
If the benefits of Web 3.0 are to be realized beyond financial applications (e.g. decentralized social, decentralized analytics, etc), then infrastructure solutions are needed to manage and scale relational databases across a decentralized network. Decentralized relational databases must be fast, cost-effective, and easy to use if they are to enable engineers to truly fulfill the benefits of a permissionless environment at scale. If the next generation of the decentralized internet is to come online, then Web 3.0 needs a relational data solution to handle these complex schemas.
Solution: Kwil - The Permissionless SQL Database
Kwil, the permissionless SQL database, enables application developers to build permissionless data environments with structured, relational data. Kwil scales traditional relational database engines (e.g. PostgresQL) across a series of decentralized nodes to ensure that data remains consistent, composable, and permissionless. With Kwil, anyone can quickly create and deploy a database on the network, then allowing communities to permissionlessly write and read data so long as such actions conform to the predefined rules.
Kwil databases are easy to use–simply define and deploy your schema, and then you can easily submit and query data via the Kwil API. Furthermore, Kwil databases are cost-competitive, as the network will only allow a user to store and retrieve as much data as has been authorized by funding (say goodbye to drastic, unexpected AWS and GCP charges). Most importantly, Kwil databases are permissionless: once data is deployed, users can write and read the data with the guarantee that the rules will not change.
At Kwil, we are empowering the next generation of Web 3.0 applications.
