GenosDB (GDB) – Decentralized P2P Graph Database

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) in GenosDB — Summary

GenosDB integrates a robust Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) module designed to secure peer-to-peer distributed graph databases through cryptographically verifiable user identities and permissions.

Key Concepts: • Identity Management: Users are identified by their Ethereum addresses. Authentication supports WebAuthn (biometric or hardware key protection) and mnemonic phrase recovery. Private keys are securely managed to sign database operations. • Role Hierarchy and Permissions: Roles such as guest, user, admin, and superadmin define granular permissions (e.g., read, write, assignRole). Roles and assignments are stored within GenosDB itself as part of the synchronized distributed state. • Superadmins: One or more Ethereum addresses can be configured as superadmins with elevated privileges, including exclusive rights to assign roles to other users. • Secure P2P Operations: Every outgoing database operation is cryptographically signed by the active user’s private key. Incoming operations from peers are verified for valid signatures and checked against the user’s assigned permissions before acceptance. • Encrypted Local Data Storage: Data tied to users is compressed and encrypted using keys derived from their Ethereum identities, ensuring privacy even in distributed environments.

Operational Flow: 1. Initialization: RBAC is activated on a GenosDB instance by initializing a security context and optionally defining superadmin addresses. 2. Authentication: Users authenticate via WebAuthn or mnemonic phrases, activating local signing capabilities. 3. Role Assignment: Superadmins assign roles to user Ethereum addresses within the distributed database, with optional expiration of assignments. 4. Real-Time Enforcement: Signatures and roles are verified on all nodes for each operation, ensuring integrity before changes propagate across the network. 5. Security State Monitoring: Callbacks allow applications to dynamically respond to changes in authentication or permission states.

Benefits: • Decentralized and cryptographically secure permission management without a central server. • Natural integration of blockchain-based identities with real-time P2P synchronization. • Granular access control, ideal for complex distributed applications. • No requirement for traditional identity management protocols like SCIM, SAML, or SSO, simplifying architecture and user experience.

Looks very promising. Do you have a vision for how we should build p2p apps more generally? I have recently found the holepunch libraries / pear runtime and am curious if you have any thoughts on those projects or how hypercore(?) compares to genosDB.

This seems like an impressive amount of work and an interesting way to combine RBAC + [realtime] Sync/Conflict Resolution + [local] Document Storage/Querying (and I'm personally interested in the geo module and am intrigued by the AI module to help with some async data pipelines); however, I'm having trouble seeing how this is graph database? Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I don't see ways for traversing the graph.

I understand that you can create and store a node and then link that node to another node, but how could I query for nodes based on that link/relationship?

E.g.,

```

  const alice = await db.put({ name: "Alice", age: 30 });
  const bob = await db.put({ name: "Bob", age: 31 });
  const cooper = await db.put({ name: "Cooper", age: 29 });
  const dwight = await db.put({ name: "Dwight", age: 33 });
  
  await db.link(alice, bob);
  await db.link(alice, cooper);
  await db.link(cooper, dwight);
  
  const { results } = await db.map({
    query: {
      'edges.age': { $gt: 30 } // pseudo code
    },
  });
  
  console.log(results[0].name); // 'Alice'

I see that an `edges` property is added on result nodes from one of the examples[1] and I'm not familiar with Mongo-style queries[2] to know if there's a better operator, but the query above is meant to find nodes that have connected/edge nodes that have an age greater than 30 (e.g., Bob).

(Also, I'm not sure what it'd look like to check against direct AND indirect edges? e.g., Bob and Dwight)

Anyways, my question/point is, is there support (or plans to support) querying and traverse a directed graph?

[1] https://github.com/estebanrfp/gdb/wiki/.map()#b-query-langua... [2] https://estebanrfp.github.io/gdb/examples/testlinks.html

If you have any questions, we can comment on https://app.gitter.im/#/room/#GDB:gitter.im

How does it relate to in comparison to gunDB?