- It's a file system with content based addressing. Instead of domains, you use the content as the domain. Because content can be very very long, we run a small program on it to produce a unique identifier based on that content (a hash). These identifiers are long enough that the possibility of two pieces of content creating the same one is virtually impossible.
- Files are automatically deduplicated.
- It chunks, hashes and organizes blobs in a smart way.
- Once something is added, it can't be changed anymore.
- At the heart of everything, is the concept of content identifiers (CIDs).
- A CID isn't just a hash of a file—it's a combination of the hash, metadata about how the content is hashed, details about encoding, and instructions for interpreting the data.
- They provide Portability and Openness.
- Keeping files available is a challenge. If the nodes storing a file go down, it'll disappear from the network.
- Filecoin idea was to help with this adding incentives to the equation.
- Data model for IPFS
- Everything is a node. Nodes have types.
- The data structure is a Merkle Tree.
- Makes easy to have interoperability of data. Useful for distributed databases.
- Bridges content addressing and distributed systems.
- Modular peer to peer networking layer.
- Multiple users across the decentralized ecosystem.
- Many implementations of each module.