tenev

tenev is a decentralized data storage and transport protocol designed to enable scalable, verifiable, and privacy-preserving data sharing across networks of participants. It emphasizes integrity, time-stamped provenance, and offline-capable operation. The protocol is designed to work without reliance on centralized storage providers, instead using a combination of content-addressable storage and cryptographic proofs.

Development: tenev emerged from a collaborative project started in 2019 by researchers and developers from several universities and open-source projects. The project published its first reference implementation in 2020 and has since evolved through several releases. The name "tenev" has been described as an acronym for "temporal event network," though contributors note it as a flexible branding rather than a fixed meaning.

Architecture and technology: The core features include a gossip-based transport layer for peer discovery, a content-addressable storage model, and a verifiable log consisting of append-only entries. Data is addressed by content hashes, allowing integrity checks and deduplication. Access control is handled through cryptographic keys and capability-based permissions. The protocol supports pluggable storage backends and can operate in mixed networks of online and offline nodes.

Use cases: tenev is used for archival repositories, collaborative scientific datasets, audit logs, and decentralized applications that require verifiable history. It also supports compliance workflows where provenance and immutability are essential.

Governance and reception: The project is maintained by a voluntary community with maintainers and an RFC-style governance process. Critics point to complexity and performance constraints in large-scale deployments, while proponents highlight resilience and strong data integrity guarantees.