Web3 promises composable, permissionless applications – yet today, developers still spend months building siloed infrastructure instead of shipping products that can actually work together.

The root cause? Critical app data often lives offchain. AKA, the metadata that gives assets meaning (who owns what, how it can be used, and how it connects to other systems) is stored in centralized databases, making it hard for others to access, use, or even trust. Think of offchain data storage like saving data onto a private server – it can change, disappear, or become inaccessible. This has turned Web3 into a fragmented landscape of walled gardens.

What if Web3 apps could actually seamlessly connect, extend, and innovate together? By bringing metadata onchain in an effective and standardized way, Patchwork makes all this possible, unlocking a new era of collaborative apps. Let's break this down…

Web3’s Walled Garden Problem: Why Most Apps Can’t Build on Each Other 

Walled gardens in tech refer to closed ecosystems where data, apps, and user interactions are restricted within a single platform, limiting interoperability with external systems. In Web3, this issue arises when apps store critical metadata offchain, creating a major roadblock when other apps try to access or interact with it.

Metadata is often stored offchain for flexibility and to avoid high data storage costs. For individual projects, this may seem like a reasonable tradeoff. But at scale, it creates:

• Lack of Persistence – Offchain data is subject to link rot, server failures, and reliance on third-party hosting, meaning valuable metadata can disappear or be unreliable. While decentralized storage solutions like IPFS and Arweave improve persistence, they do not enable structured composable data models onchain.

• Fragmentation – Every app structures its metadata differently, forcing developers to rebuild the same foundations instead of simply leveraging shared, interoperable standards.

• Limited Composability – Apps can’t natively reference or extend each other’s data, blocking innovation that could come from developers stacking and remixing existing work.

The Cost of Isolation: Real-World Roadblocks

Consider Decentraland's marketplace: while their virtual assets exist on the blockchain, the trade and auction metadata lives offchain, accessible only through their specific UI. This isn't just a technical detail – it's a fundamental limitation that prevents true ecosystem integration. Other platforms can't programmatically interact with or build upon this marketplace, limiting innovation to single-platform implementations.

In DeFi, the problem is even more acute. Lending protocols can't access standardized cross-platform reputation data, forcing each to build isolated risk models. A user's excellent track record on one protocol means nothing on another – it's like having to rebuild your professional reputation from zero every time you change employers.

This isn’t just an inconvenience, it’s preventing Web3 from reaching its full potential. The most powerful breakthroughs in tech happen when builders can build on top of each other’s work. Web2 unlocked this with APIs. Now, Web3 has the chance to go even further if the app metadata is structured onchain in a way that enables efficient discoverability and composability.

The Power of Bringing Apps Onchain

Standardized onchain metadata storage is crucial for enabling apps to interact and build upon each other effectively. This foundation creates:

• True Interoperability – Apps can natively access each others’ data instead of duplicating efforts.

• Persistent Data – No reliance on centralized servers that can disappear or change data.

• Stackable Innovation – Developers can compose new apps by leveraging existing onchain records, similar to how DeFi apps stack protocols like Legos.

Instead of fragmented, isolated systems, a shared standard allows apps to become part of a collaborative, ever-expanding ecosystem where every new development strengthens the network rather than creating yet another walled garden.

Patchwork makes this possible by providing standardized, queryable metadata schemas that any app can use, ensuring seamless data sharing and interoperability, as well as efficiency for low storage costs.

More than just a schema, Patchwork’s Protocol actively orchestrates onchain relationships so metadata isn’t just stored, it’s meaningfully connected across apps. To make integration effortless, the Patchwork Developer Kit (PDK) and Patchwork Wizard equip developers with ready-to-use tooling, eliminating the need to build custom infrastructure from scratch. And now with text-to-config, we're making it possible for anyone to go from idea to working onchain app in minutes, not months.

All this to say, by building with Patchwork, you can focus on the true purpose of your app rather than spending months building out the data structure of a siloed app – enabling a new era of smarter, more scalable, and collaborative innovations.

Join A New Realm of Seamless Web3 Innovation

The time for storing important metadata offchain and building walled garden apps is over. The future of Web3 development is here, and it's faster, more accessible, and more powerful than ever before.

Patchwork is leading the way by not only providing the essential framework that developers need to build rich onchain apps, but also the tools for any creative to build their own app, further driving a vibrant, interconnected Web3 space. 

Stop building in isolation. Start building with Patchwork today.