Local-first and P2P databases
Peer-to-peer movement is a transport property; data logistics is the operating model around it.
DefraDB and GuardianDB focus on local-first or peer-to-peer database operation, including offline work, decentralized synchronization, or content-addressed foundations. They are infrastructure relatives, but not RDF stores or semantic graph platforms.
Axis coverage
The six axes of the complete logistics loop. What each axis asks.
Compare the mechanisms.
Local-first and P2P databases
Local operation with reduced dependence on a permanently reachable central service.
Peer synchronization and convergence across intermittently connected devices or nodes.
Architectures designed around distribution instead of adding replication later.
Legra
RDF and LPG interfaces provide portable meaning, reasoning, and graph-shaped context above the block layer.
Explicit Host, Custodian, Gateway, Worker, and Licensor roles add professional authority and operational management.
Policies, task trees, journals, offers, contracts, pricing, and settlement make P2P exchange accountable across organizations.
Questions to use in an evaluation
Ask these in the room.
- 01
Is synchronization sufficient, or must exchanged data carry shared semantic meaning?
- 02
Who authorizes, preserves, prices, and proves each cross-party operation?
- 03
Can the system support both self-hosted local work and commercial network services?
Graph features are only the substrate.
Legra also organizes the work that uses and changes the graph, the evidence needed to review that work, and the economic relationships that move data and value between parties. That operational layer is what turns graph infrastructure into data logistics infrastructure.
A complete history of the work
Legra keeps each piece of work together with the changes it made, the evidence behind it, and any costs incurred. That history stays private to the workspace and cannot be quietly rewritten.
- Work by people, AI agents, and automated services appears in one traceable record.
- See what is happening now, then return to the same history later for review.
Layered provenance
Full provenance connects signed commits and exact deltas to task and transaction lineage, actors, delegated authority, imports, and every retained rule and premise behind derived facts.
- Evidence answers who or what acted, on whose authority, from which inputs, and with which result.
- Commit, activity, fact-origin, and derivation evidence remains attached to the workspace and its history.
Composable transaction pricing
The admitted total composes independently priced data value, compute, storage, custody, transport, external I/O, rights, and operator services instead of treating bytes as the value of data.
- Charges, credits, refunds, penalties, and commissions contribute to the final amount.
- Zero is an explicit price through the same accounting path, including self-operated work.
Multidirectional token settlement
Every resource-consuming operation follows one path: measure, price, authorize, execute, record, and settle. Detailed evidence stays with the workspace instead of one central billing ledger.
- Tokens can flow to data owners, infrastructure and service Operators, and the NetworkOperator treasury.
- The same evidence supports internal chargeback and external settlement; subscriptions supply token packages rather than feature gates.
Product-level technical deep dive
Local-first and P2P databases: product matrix.
This matrix includes only products in the same directly comparable family. Adjacent product types belong in their own guide instead of making one oversized, apples-and-oranges scorecard.
GuardianDB
Local-first P2P database on Rust, Iroh, and Willow
| Feature | Legra | DefraDB | GuardianDB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture | |||
| Peer-to-peer distribution | |||
| No central server required | |||
| Data Model & Query | |||
| RDF / Linked Data native | |||
| Full-text search | |||
| Query Languages | |||
| RDF 1.2 | |||
| SPARQL 1.1 | |||
| SPARQL 1.2 | |||
| RDF-star (RDF*) | |||
| openCypher | |||
| ISO GQL | |||
| SQL | |||
| Graph Store Protocol | |||
| GraphQL | |||
| Proprietary query language | |||
| Versioning & Branching | |||
| Git-style branching | |||
| Immutable commits | |||
| Delta / diff queries | |||
| Security & Encryption | |||
| Decentralized identity (DIDs) | |||
| Enterprise & Operations | |||
| High-availability clustering | |||
| OWL / RDFS reasoning engine | |||
| Datalog reasoning | |||
| SWRL / RIF rules | |||
| LPG reasoning | |||
| SHACL / ShEx validation | |||
| Managed cloud offering | |||
| Visual graph explorer / GUI tools | |||
| Production-ready today | |||
| AI & Vector | |||
| Built-in vector search | |||
| Versioned vector indexes | |||
| Encrypted vector search | |||
| Data Model Breadth | |||
| Property graph / LPG support | |||
| ACID transactions | |||
| Immutable transaction history | |||
| Indexing & Performance | |||
| Ad-hoc index creation | |||