IPDB is the Interplanetary Database. It’s a public blockchain database for the world. Think of IPDB as being the database for a decentralized world computer.
### Who owns IPDB?
IPDB is operated by the IPDB Foundation, a charitable organization registered in Berlin, Germany. IPDB has a number of member organizations, or Caretakers, who provide consensus voting and input on governance.
### How is IPDB funded?
IPDB Foundation is currently funded by ascribe GmbH, but plans to become self-sufficient by selling transactions on IPDB.
Caretakers play a critical role in IPDB’s operation and governance (see “How does consensus work on IPDB?”). In addition to voting on transactions on IPDB, Caretakers vote to approve new Caretakers and to select the IPDB Foundation’s board of directors.
Caretakers can apply to IPDB to be considered or be nominated by existing Caretakers. The existing Caretakers will vote to decide whether a new Caretaker should be added.
Caretakers must have demonstrated a commitment to building or protecting an open, decentralized Internet. A majority of the Caretaker roles must be held by not-for-profit organizations. Caretakers are chosen to reflect a diversity of roles, geographical locations, and jurisdictions.
We don’t know yet, but we intend to keep it really cheap. Cheap means orders of magnitude cheaper than other blockchain databases or traditional exchange networks.
### Is it open source?
All the code and documentation used or produced by IPDB is open source. [BigchainDB](https://github.com/bigchaindb/bigchaindb) and [RethinkDB](https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb) code and documentation are available under open source licenses.
IPDB is a public instance of [BigchainDB](https://www.bigchaindb.com/), a scalable blockchain database built on top of [RethinkDB](https://www.rethinkdb.com/), a big data database.
IPDB operates a federated model for consensus. IPDB relies on a number of trusted entities called Caretakers. The Caretakers vote on all transactions on the network, and transactions approved by the majority are added to the database. You can learn more about the consensus model in the BigchainDB [whitepaper](https://www.bigchaindb.com/whitepaper/).
IPDB brings blockchain characteristics to an open source big data database: 1) decentralized control, 2) immutability, 3) [Sybil tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack), 4) native assets, 5) native asset transfer, 6) public writability, and 7) public readability.
### Is IPDB a currency?
No. IPDB has native assets but those assets are not a currency. Instead, anyone can issue and transfer assets or tokens that represent something else.
BigchainDB has already been integrated into other services (see our Integrations section). Other integrations are waiting to be created. If you have a request, or better still, if you want to help out, you can head over to the [BigchainDB developer community](https://github.com/bigchaindb/bigchaindb) at Github.
### Why is IPDB better than IPFS, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Dogecoin…?
IPDB is not a replacement for decetralized computation platforms such as Ethereum, file storage from IPFS, or cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. IPDB is *complimentary* to them. We see IPDB as filling a gap in the decentralized stack.
