The InterPlanetary File System and the Filecoin network
Ioannis Psaras, David Dias
Protocol Labs, Portugal
Abstract
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a peer-to-peer content-addressable distributed file system that seeks to connect all computing devices with the same system of files. It is an open-source community-driven project, with reference implementations in Go and Javascript, and a global community of millions of users. IPFS resembles past and present efforts to build and deploy Information-Centric Networking approaches to content storage, resolution, distribution and delivery. IPFS and libp2p, which is the modular network stack of IPFS, are based on name-resolution based routing. The resolution system is based on Kademlia DHT and content is addressed by flat hash-based names. IPFS sees significant real-world usage, with over 250,000 daily active network nodes, millions of end users and wide adoption by several other projects in the Decentralised Web space, but not only. An adjacent project to IPFS, which was also masterminded and is also being developed within Protocol Labs (the umbrella company of IPFS and libp2p) is filecoin. Filecoin is a cryptocurrency that supports a decentralised storage and delivery network. Storage and retrieval miners are rewarded according to their contribution to the network and the mechanics of filecoin secure the network against malicious activity. The objective of this tutorial is to make the audience familiar with IPFS and filecoin and able to use the tools provided by the project for research and development. The tutorial targets both developers and researchers, who may contribute to the project or use it as a tool.
