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IPFS, Again

macwright.org

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Re: IPFS, Again

#101

Post by xur17 »

dunkelheit wrote: post #82
fergie wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DAT is run by influential hobbyists of independent means, with occasional funding from non-profit organisations. IPFS is essentially run by a very well funded (300musd) private company. For this reason alone I think DAT is the more likely to succeed. It seems hard to reconcile the longevity of a truly distributed protocol with the need of a private company to retain control.

> IPFS is essentially run by a very well funded (300musd) private company. That is news to me - I've thought they were a scrappy startup. The issues mentioned in the post like glitches in the docs are excusable for a project that relies on volunteers who prefer writing code to polishing docs, but if you have $300M in funding then wtf? Just, you know, hire good project management and docs people.

My understanding was that most of the team focus has shifted over to the filecoin project in the last year or two, and they aren't dedicating as many resources to ipfs. That said, I agree that this is pretty deplorable.

Re: IPFS, Again

#102

Post by StavrosK »

asdkhadsj wrote: post #98
StavrosK wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do, and I expected much more, unfortunately. The daemon still has problems with rampant memory usage, chews through two CPUs during normal operation, the pinning API is abysmal, DHT resolution is so problematic that you routinely need to connect two nodes directly together so they can discover each other's files, etc. I don't want to say they're bad at what they're doing, as I don't know how hard it is, but at leas…

I agree. Personally I've had similar thoughts but instead of viewing it as a signal of their lack of talent, I viewed it.. sadly, as a signal for their lack of attention to IPFS. From a largely outsiders perspective, it has felt like FileCoin was the thing they wanted to do. Either that, or they just don't have enough bandwidth to take on all of these projects. Regardless, it doesn't feel to me as if IPFS has had the…

This is exactly the impression I've formed as well. I'm sure they have super smart people (and I've talked to many of them), it just doesn't seem they're interested enough in improving IPFS.

The "canary in the coal mine" for me is that pinning API ticket, which has been open for years and amounts to "please put an async UI over pinning". If something that simple and useful doesn't get fixed quickly, I'm not optimistic about the future of the project.

It's too bad, because I think it's an extremely useful idea.

Re: IPFS, Again

#103

Post by beders »

rohan1024 wrote: post #99
beders wrote: post #64

Anyone remember the P2P craze of the early 2000s'? Or was it late 90s? What's left over from that? Freenet? What I'm always wondering about: Someone needs to foot the server/bandwidth bills. Who? If you run a Pi on your home network and serve requests with your 5MB/s upload: That's fine. More power to you. We need more of that. (and in that case, you are paying your ISP) But the transformation envisioned and the band…

It's not the cost that's preventing what you mentioned. It's the ISPs which don't allow incoming traffic and have symmetric NATs all over there network. IPV6 is here and we should have gotten rid of NAT long ago but there's no incentive for corporations or ISPs so we are stuck here.

That's true as well. ISPs have no interest allowing end users to host anything meaningful.

Re: IPFS, Again

#104

Post by zzzcpan »

beders wrote: post #64

Anyone remember the P2P craze of the early 2000s'? Or was it late 90s? What's left over from that? Freenet? What I'm always wondering about: Someone needs to foot the server/bandwidth bills. Who? If you run a Pi on your home network and serve requests with your 5MB/s upload: That's fine. More power to you. We need more of that. (and in that case, you are paying your ISP) But the transformation envisioned and the band…

P2P craze gave birth to BitTorrent. And p2p bandwidth does actually come for free for modern broadband ISPs with fiber to the building kind of infrastructure. In fact p2p allows ISPs to even save on expensive bandwidth by pushing more traffic over local and inexpensive routes that sit unused. Although bandwidth costs are already insignificant, take like $1 per month per consumer tops, so it shouldn't even be of any concern.

Re: IPFS, Again

#105

Post by kebman »

drawnwren wrote: post #54
cryptica wrote: post #27

I work for a cryptocurrency company as a software engineer and I definitely agree that a lot of projects backed by crypto funds tend to over promise and under deliver. It's clear that those who control the funds aren't always the best at judging tech talent. Big tech corporations have had years to settle down and build a reputation to attract top talent. Crypto companies tend to attract greed over talent and it shows…

I've seen this argument before and tend to disagree. There is certainly greed, but I think the larger problem is that crypto doesn't have users. I don't think it's particularly novel in 2019 to say that a successful app is built off of the feedback of its users. Any app, regardless of intentions or engineering prowess, is going to struggle if it doesn't have a sizeable user base providing feedback (and devs who liste…

I think you're touching on an important point. There are already other vessels for the niche that cryptocurrency fills—at least as far as websites and web services go—that are way easier to both implement and use. With that said, I'm still rooting for cryptocurrency as a general competitor to state-backed currency, that in turn gives people all over the world more freedom to conduct their business without state or corporate intervention. That is most of all about freedom, and the only bogeyman they've yet to conjure against it is "it's used for criminal stuff". Like the dollar isn't also used for crime...

Re: IPFS, Again

#106

Post by kebman »

Just out of curiosity, how would you delete something off IPFS? Is the only solution to have the address hash point to a program, or app, if at all possible? Or a space that does not update the hash, iven if the "thing" is updated? I'm new to this interplanetary world... :D

Re: IPFS, Again

#107

Post by zzzcpan »

StavrosK wrote: post #102
asdkhadsj wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Personally I've had similar thoughts but instead of viewing it as a signal of their lack of talent, I viewed it.. sadly, as a signal for their lack of attention to IPFS. From a largely outsiders perspective, it has felt like FileCoin was the thing they wanted to do. Either that, or they just don't have enough bandwidth to take on all of these projects. Regardless, it doesn't feel to me as if IPFS has had the…

This is exactly the impression I've formed as well. I'm sure they have super smart people (and I've talked to many of them), it just doesn't seem they're interested enough in improving IPFS. The "canary in the coal mine" for me is that pinning API ticket, which has been open for years and amounts to "please put an async UI over pinning". If something that simple and useful doesn't get fixed quickly, I'm not optimisti…

The problem is they have both: lack of interest towards IPFS and $300 million weight to keep control over IPFS development. So doing all the necessary work to give up control and encourage quality independent implementations is out of the question.

Re: IPFS, Again

#108

Post by mirekrusin »

kebman wrote: post #106

Just out of curiosity, how would you delete something off IPFS? Is the only solution to have the address hash point to a program, or app, if at all possible? Or a space that does not update the hash, iven if the "thing" is updated? I'm new to this interplanetary world... :D

Not sure you probably store encrypted data and delete decryption key if you want to discard. Now unused blobs will probably fade away with time. Not sure if it works this way.

Re: IPFS, Again

#109

Post by hobofan »

kebman wrote: post #106

Just out of curiosity, how would you delete something off IPFS? Is the only solution to have the address hash point to a program, or app, if at all possible? Or a space that does not update the hash, iven if the "thing" is updated? I'm new to this interplanetary world... :D

From IPFS: You don't. As long as a connected node is hosting the file, it will be available to other peers. For a file where a single host is "pinning" a file (= purposfully hosting the file), it will fade out organically once it leaves the caches of all the nodes that accessed it once.

From IPNS: You point the IPNS entry to something nonsensical and then by default it will be gone once the TTL of the old IPNS entry is reached (kind of like DNS).

Re: IPFS, Again

#110

Post by skyfaller »

sprash wrote: post #44
pmlnr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was namecoin way before that, with .bit domains and failed to solve anything.

I never tried ENS but namecoin works flawlessly as intended. It is actually more reliable than classic DNS. It may have failed at adoption, but the problem of decentralizing DNS has been solved.

According to Wikipedia, Namecoin uses proof-of-work just like Bitcoin, and is therefore very energy-intensive / an environmental disaster. Therefore I could not support Namecoin even if it works perfectly as you say it does. We're going to need a more environmentally-friendly solution to decentralizing DNS.
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