Think Locally, Act Globally: A Programming Model for Decentralized Applications

This article introduces CORDA, a programming model for decentralized software based on replicated convergent dataflows. CORDA encapsulates advanced distributed systems techniques into familiar programming abstractions, allowing developers to focus on local operations while the runtime reliably achieves consistent global states. CORDA extends beyond traditional cloud-centric models by providing sophisticated distributed concepts to client software. This enables applications-specific communication patterns and consistency guarantees, rather than being constrained by cloud provider offerings. By decentralizing computation and data management across cloud, edge, and local resources, CORDA enables the creation of truly decentralized systems. This approach offers several potential advantages, including reduced latency, enhanced resilience to network disruptions, improved privacy through local data retention, and decreased risk of vendor lock-in.