Ceramic is a decentralized event streaming protocol that enables developers to build decentralized databases, distributed compute pipelines, and authenticated data feeds. Ceramic nodes can subscribe to subsets of streams forgoing the need of a global network state. This makes Ceramic an eventually consistent system (as opposed to strongly consistent like L1 blockchains), enabling web scale applications to be built reliably.

## Core Components

The Ceramic protocol consists of the following components:

- [**Concepts →**](https://developers.ceramic.network/docs/protocol/ceramic-one/concepts) - Understand events, streams, interests, and the data pipeline
- [**Installation →**](https://developers.ceramic.network/docs/protocol/ceramic-one/usage/installation) - Get started with Ceramic One
- [**Producing Events →**](https://developers.ceramic.network/docs/protocol/ceramic-one/usage/produce) - Create and update streams
- [**Consuming Events →**](https://developers.ceramic.network/docs/protocol/ceramic-one/usage/consume) - Subscribe and read from streams
- [**Querying Data →**](https://developers.ceramic.network/docs/protocol/ceramic-one/usage/query) - Use Flight SQL to query the pipeline

## Self-Anchoring

Ceramic One supports self-anchoring to EVM blockchains, allowing you to run your own anchor service:

- [**Self-Anchoring Overview →**](https://developers.ceramic.network/docs/protocol/ceramic-one/anchoring/overview)
- [**EVM Configuration →**](https://developers.ceramic.network/docs/protocol/ceramic-one/anchoring/evm-configuration)

## Authentication

Ceramic uses Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) for authentication:

- [**DIDs Introduction →**](https://developers.ceramic.network/docs/dids/introduction)
- [**Authorization →**](https://developers.ceramic.network/docs/dids/authorization)
- [**Managing Sessions →**](https://developers.ceramic.network/docs/dids/managing-sessions)