prostorech

Prostorech is a hypothetical open standard and ecosystem for portable cross-application storage orchestration in distributed systems. It defines a protocol for managing DataObjects—bundles that combine data, metadata, and versioning—to enable interoperability across diverse storage backends and services.

The term circles around pro- (forward) and store/tech, and emerged in speculative design discussions around 2021 to describe a portable storage contract for modern architectures. As of 2025 it is not an established industry standard, and real-world uptake remains limited.

Origin traces to a speculative design paper from the Northbridge Institute of Technology, with early experiments and a community-driven reference implementation released on a public repository in 2022. Subsequent years saw broader discussions and several prototype libraries.

Technical overview: DataObjects have a unique identifier, a payload, metadata fields, a version vector, and an access-control list. The protocol supports create, read, update, delete, move, and replicate operations, and relies on pluggable storage backends (such as S3, IPFS, or local file systems).

The model emphasizes content-addressable storage and deterministic conflict resolution to maintain consistency across backends. It aims to separate data provenance, policy, and storage implementation from application logic, but faces interoperability and governance questions that limit production use.

Implementation and reception: Several prototype libraries in Go and Rust exist, plus reference protocol documentation. Adoption has been mostly educational and experimental, with debates comparing prostorech to existing standards in data exchange and storage, highlighting both potential benefits and practical obstacles.