Introduction

Canvas applications are built on a programmable multi-writer relational database. They're easy to configure and automatically have several useful properties:

• Real-time. Nodes connect and sync directly with each other over WebSockets, and optionally can use GossipSub to broadcast actions over an open mesh of servers.
• Eventually-consistent and convergent. Actions can freely read and write to a relational database. Every peer's database state will deterministically converge regardless of the order in which the actions are received.
• Self-authenticating. Every action is signed by a session key authorized by an end user identity, like a cryptographic JSON Web Token. The entire action log can be verified and replayed by anyone at any time; applications are trustless and portable.
• Lock-free and concurrent. Any number of peers can concurrently execute new actions, without waiting for consensus. No transaction costs or confirmation wait times.
• Cross-platform. Canvas apps run in the browser or on NodeJS, persisting data with IndexedDB, SQLite in WASM, SQLite with LMDB, or Postgres.