Bitcoin Forum

I was doing a research on uploading large files such as videos on Blockchain...many informations I got were really discouraging until  I came  across  a great solution that is a little different from Blockchain —  IPFS.   Data storage on IPFS  is Distributed/Decentralized and uncensorable.. .  it works abit like Bitorrent (I see no difference?).  Nodes and Content creators on IPFS are incentivized. Seems like this Decentralized video platform: https://d.tube/  uses IPFS and I honestly like the site. Its Video thumbnails load way quicker than YouTube.
My frustration with Blockchains as regards to Large file hosting is their tendency to become  Centralized and quickly too. So I think this might be a wonderful option?


 I also learned that IPFS could replace https in the future.  But i doubt governments would like the idea.

I might be prepared to add a 2Tb HDD to the network, but I'm not sure if that would help much. It would probably be useful for my education though.

It's probably worth supporting if it helps to preserve a free and independent press.

with what do IPFS users get incentivized?
I've been reading about it but it is still not clear to me.
i've also thought that IPFS works like a torrent network, but i like how they said that

This project seems absolutely brilliant. Literally a distributed Git system without having a "trusted" PKI, "trusted" DNS, or any of the other centralized authority bullshit we have on the Internet today.




What incentives are there for torrenting files? Sharing is caring.

Also, if you're a content producer, you can deliver to a world wide population fairly easily and quickly... this is a problem that can costs individuals tens of thousands of dollars to solve currently... or relying on an untrusted third-party entity (looking at you Alphabet).


Check out the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System) and the git repo (https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs/blob/master/README.md#quick-summary). I bet IPFS released on the IPFS network too... which is pretty neat.


Torrents use hashes per block too. You really should read the Wikipedia page and check it out.



That's actually a good point I hadn't given much thought. I'm willing to bet large blobs are split into smaller blocks and distributed. It'd be interesting if that were not the case, there could be a lot more optimization for that.

IPFS and LBRY is pretty similar, is it not?
I haven't done too much research about IPFS, but I don't think they have any financial incentive model to get people to seed/host the content. LBRY has this in their agenda though.

I'd like to know more about IPFS though.

yes i saw this recently as well and thought that it could be a game changer, filecoin and guys at Protocol Labs are seeking to ensure we move from HTTPS to IPFS. you can also check out this article which i think is well thought out https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/magazine/beyond-the-bitcoin-bubble.html

Filecoin is done by the guys who came up with IPFS- and they raised over $250MM last year (so around a $500MM Market Cap). IPFS is the protocol, Filecoin is the economy on top of that. Compare that to a Market Cap on LBRY of $90MM.

You will see in the first post that one of its advantages is that it isn't limited by blockchain structures.

IPFS needs a lot more development. Honestly it's better on paper then in practice now, but has enormous potential and is very promising.

Biggest issues so far - "Pinning" and redundancy, private group and network support and simple versioning of resources is a disaster. API's are also lacking and not catching up in time with main daemon. So if you inclined to try it in your app, you are looking at forking code/api for sure

ok now I see this. IPFS is more like Bittorrent and not like blockchain.

So if there is no fees then things won't be stored permanently. Even on torrents you find things with zero seeders. Could this be a problem?

This seems an interesting thing to look into, when I have enough focus that is, so leaving a comment here to remember.

Also, wasn't SIA coin a provider for distributed storage? or we're talking about different stuff here??

Yeah SIA is a cloud storage provider. But I don't think they are using IPFS, instead they use file segments in a p2p network. SIA Coin is the incentive of the network, used to pay for their cloud storage service.

I have seen some blockchain projects utilize IPFS since blockchain cannot store large files. SIA has better redundancy than IPFS imo. With incentive, you won't find files with "0 seeders" since they are being paid to store your files.

I've just checked d.tube and it seems nice, however I can't find a download button anywhere :-\  having downloadable content is a deal breaker for most video platforms.

If there's no incentive, wouldn't we reach a point of 0 seeds at some time? what are the possible solutions for that? because regardless of how much normal users contribute to the space, the content is increasing way too fast for us to catch up with it.

What would you want to be paid to host per year per Tb of storage?   Don't take internet costs into account.