NEAR as public DataBase – DataChain

Info disbalance problem

Informational disbalance in today’s world – what Govs and Big Corps know about citizens and the opposite – seems to be a cause for most systematic failures: public goods quality and availability, free speech, social capital quality, manipulations on social media, etc.
This reason is simple – without negative feedback no system can be sustainable.

How NEAR started

To my best knowledge early days Near was developed by bright minds who were heavily engaged with distributed databases projects. Thus there is a good chance that by its origin Near shall look for the adoption as a database, not as a distributed computer or arbitrage machine.

Main usage of NEAR

Some of top of most used Dapps on Near write metadata on-chain. Basically attestation of different kinds.

So this may prove the idea of positioning and adjusting NEAR as a public, immutable, distributed, open database.
There is a very important aspect – data privacy – and it has been addressed via existing encryption tools and ZKs development.

Solution

SocialDB

Unified open source service including bullet -proof contract or set of similar contracts that will allow to write, index and read ZK proofs in an efficient and convenient way.

It is up to applications to cover storage expenses or let users pay to record/read those proofs.

Data Availability layer

Plug NEAR’s DA layer into your L2 framework and start publishing transaction data on a blockchain with a proven trajectory of 100% uptime over its lifetime.

Utilizing NEAR as storage data availability with a focus on lowering rollup DA fees.

• Blob Store Contract: A contract that provides the store for arbitrary DA blobs.
• Light Client: A trustless off-chain light client for NEAR with DA-enabled features.
• RPC Client: The defacto client for submitting data blobs to NEAR.
• Integrations: Proof of concept works for integrating with L2 rollups.

Examples of Using

1. As User when I submit an online form I want to have immutable, verifiable proof to prevent the form owner from data alteration/deletion. Like email confirmation but time stamped on NEAR – working prototype nStamp
2. Alice promised Bob to love him forever. So Alice nStamped this message
   

   I will love you forever, Bob.near. Yours, Alice.near

   and share the nStamp transaction with Bob.
   So both A and B can verify the encrypted message, its origin, and timestamp.
   While naive Chris has no idea about that deal and still sends flowers, gifts and NFTs to A.

3. Voting – timestamped proof that voter voted for valid candidate without disclosing the actual choice

Know more possible use cases – leave at your comments bellow.

Updated: May 12, 2025