IPFS

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IPFS is short for InterPlanetary File System, potentially a static site storage method using content based addressing.

IPFS is self-described as “a new hypermedia distribution protocol”.

The main advantage of IPFS is that it’ points to the content rather than the domain where the content is. This allows for anyone that has a copy of the content to host it. If you have a video or a folder with a web page you can host it in the same URL as everybody else.

It also creates an immutable URL that changes when the content changes and is much more resistant to censorship and deplatforming.

Unlike with TOR .onion addresses, anyone can inspect the IPs hosting and downloading a specific file. IPFS resembles BitTorrent in this aspect.

Recently users are starting to link NFTs to ipfs rather than https because it creates a more resilient and immutable URL.

Events

There have been some IPFS meetups in Portland, Oregon starting in July 2015.

Selfdogfooding

• https://ipfs.io/ website itself is all stored in IPFS and hosted using an IPFS gateway. For example you can also see the site at any other public gateway, such as here: http://dweb.link/ipns/ipfs.io/
• http://juan.benet.ai/ (founder Juan Benet’s site) is a static site that says it "It runs on IPFS." (selfdogfooding) as of 2019-03-07 (previously had no mention as of 2019-02-28; site appeared unchanged since 2014).
• https://ipfs.io/ipns/johanbove.info/ Johan Bové keeps a mirror of his personal static site on the IPFS network and has set up a _dnslink to tell IPFS enabled browsers that this mirror is available. These browsers are expected to detect the txt DNS entry and redirect to the IPFS mirror. He is keeping the data pinned on the IPFS network with Pinata.cloud. The IPFS hosted data is available through multiple IPFS gateways.

Implementations

Marcus Povey has an experimental plugin with IPFS support for Known.

• 2019-02-21 Marcus Povey: IPFS Support for Known (archived)
• https://github.com/mapkyca/Known-IPFS

Issues

Pinning

Since IPFS is a peer-to-peer network, the availability on data depends on an online computer connected to the IPFS network having a copy of the CID hashed data. IPFS servers (peers) will share data it has access to the IPFS network automatically. However the IPFS server will run "garbage collection" periodically to purges old irrelevant data from disk. To keep providing important files to the IPFS network, users are expected to "pin" such files. Pinned files are not garbage collected. This helps to keep data on the IPFS network, however the data will still only be available when that user's computer running IPFS is always online. To counter this problem services have started to provide a permanently online IPFS pinned service. Users can request to "pin" data for them for free or for a monthly fee and make sure their data stays available even when their computers are off.

Examples of such services are:

• Pinata.cloud
• infura.io

Since IPFS-go version 0.8.0 data can be submitted to remote services from the CLI tool.

• Work with Pinning Services
• Tutorial on how to deploy a static website to IPFS

Who

There are no human names on its website (https://ipfs.io), except the title of a video has Juan Benet as a presenter, whose website appears to be http://juan.benet.ai/.

• As of 2019 the https://ipfs.io/team/ page has a number of other people as working group Captains.

Interplanetary

Apparently unrelated to NASA’s actual Interplanetary Solar System Internet (SSI) being built on their Disruption Tolerant Networking

See Also

• http://www.atnnn.com/p/ipfs-hosting/
• 2017-08-09 Tom MacWright: So you want to decentralize your website with IPFS (archived)
• 2017-11-08 "IPFS: identity survives only as long as someone cares, not for ever = inevitable loss"
• Criticism: 2019-06-08 Tom MacWright: IPFS, Again

  At five years old, is this a project that’s usable ‘here and now’, as the homepage promised in 2017? …

  No

  IPFS is still not usable for websites.

• Older article by Amber Case: 2015-10-04 TechCrunch Why The Internet Needs IPFS Before It’s Too Late
• 2021-01-19 Brave browser announces support for IPFS. https://brave.com/brave-integrates-ipfs/
• The Agregore browser supports linking, embedding, and sharing content to IPFS.
• https://docs.ipfs.io/concepts/file-systems/#mutable-file-system-mfs
• Cause of some number of dead NFTs: https://twitter.com/scanlime/status/1371509988179464196
  • "IPFS would prevent the original creator from changing the artwork, but it would not ensure that files remain available. I've already in my very limited search found some NFTs with IPFS resources that are no longer hosted anywhere." @scanlime March 15, 2021
• ^more: https://twitter.com/CheckMyNFT/status/1372253288863825925
  • "Btw we’ve been tracking this for 7 days now and most of the files we check from @niftygateway on IPFS fail" @CheckMyNFT March 17, 2021