Introduction
Onyx Mesh is a permissioned ledger. Applications submit transactions to it; the core validates each one, timestamps it, assigns it a position, and commits it to an append-only sequence that is never edited and never reordered. Every participant permitted to read the ledger reads that same sequence, in that same order.
That ordering is what everything else is built on. A record that several parties — or several systems inside one organization — can each read and each rely on is a different thing from a database one of them owns. Balances, positions and histories are all derived from the sequence, so two parties reconciling a disagreement are comparing the same events rather than comparing two systems' opinions of them.
Onyx Mesh records what happened and in what order. It does not run your business logic. There are no programs on the ledger: the rules that decide whether a payment is permitted, how a fee is calculated, or which customer an account belongs to stay in your own services, along with the data behind them. Those services read the ledger back by querying it, or by subscribing to a feed, which delivers committed transactions to a consumer in order and remembers how far that consumer has acknowledged.
Participation is permissioned throughout. People and systems reach a ledger with an API credential carrying a role that decides what they may read and write. Inside the ledger, every account and asset names the keys that control it, and how many of them must sign, so authority to move a particular kind of token out of a particular account is granted explicitly and separately from access to the API.
Onyx Mesh is used where the record has to hold up to inspection: tokenized assets and securities, digital cash and payment networks, CBDC infrastructure, identity and compliance systems, trade finance and settlement, and coordination between enterprises and government bodies.
Where to startLink to this section
- The 5-Minute Guide creates a ledger, issues tokens into an account, and moves them, in about thirty lines of code.
- Tokens, Assets and Accounts describe the data model; Transactions describes how it changes.
- The worked examples — tokenized securities, digital cash, loan participations and marketplace settlement — each model a whole application, from the keys outwards.