> * How did this project get started? What problem is it trying to solve?
OrbitDB got started because we wanted to build serverless applications, especially for the web (ie. applications that run in the browser.) Serverless meaning "no server" and no central authority, ie. something that can't be shut down.
OrbitDB gives tools to build systems and applications where the user owns their data, that is, the data that is not controlled by a service. As a way of simple example, imagine Twitter that doesn't have one massive database for all tweets, but rather you'd have one database for each user.
One great piece of writing to think about the use cases and what kind of systems and applications can be built following the concepts applied in OrbitDB is this "Local-first software" https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html (there's prolly a thread somewhere here too on that).
tl;dr: You use this any time you want to have mutable data shared across a peer-to-peer network.
I wasn't there at the beginning but I believe the project came out of trying to achieve said mutable state within IPFS (which, for other readers is content-addressed and therefore append-only)
Some basic questions, as I am still struggling to see the use case of this project.
* How did this project get started? What problem is it trying to solve?
* Are there any real world examples of where this project is used?