I like reading about IPFS, but I do not really have the time to learn about it and get involved.
Last I remember, Z-Library was having an issue scaling the DHS to handle the number of files [1]. Did those issues get resolved? How is it going now? Also, is there anything being done to ensure every file has seeders?
I’ve dived deep into IPFS and built several prototypes on top of it. It ended up not being performant enough for me, and that was after heavily modifying the codebase so that it was true p2p browser & server (their webrtc transport had a lot of issues and they didn’t seem too interested in it, but my needs required it as a backbone).
The security was also a concern, and the scaling had issues. Pinning millions of small items got so slow it would not function. Then I ended up having concerns over hashed based addressing being easy to censor with the architecture IPFS was using (more hub & spoke than anything, given signaling and relay servers were centralized).
I could go on but I ran into so many issues I ended up implementing my own solution that did everything I wanted. Wanted to squeeze even more performance, I’ve been converting that solution to Rust.
This was a couple years ago so maybe things have changed since I used it. Last I checked, they seemed busy on Filecoin.
The idea of IPFS is great and I want to see it succeed, but I think that they got so caught up in their jargon and modularity, the project lost track of some fundamentals.
Honestly I think Consensys/IPFS/Libp2p is just some corporatized way to derail real P2P and decentralization. Their libraries are total garbage. Lots of complicated code that simply doesn't work. No documentation. I mean look how much IPFS and Libp2p is pumped but IT DOESN'T WORK. IPNS is a joke. All way overengineered crap that does everything but actually nothing. Look at the $$$ and pedigree behind Consensys it's 100% establishment.
Peer-to-peer is too general and too useful to be spoilt by "blockchain". But there is so much money behind this crap it is a formidable virus that can infect any project.
ConsenSys is a company formed by Ethereum co-founder. He has sold out to the big banks, in the opinion of some Consensys shareholders.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/consensys-shareholders-readyi...
"Falls says he believes both MetaMask and Infura - what he calls "the crown jewels" of ConsenSys - could have been decentralized and tokenized, and that their projected use is "completely anathema" to the peer-to-peer principles of the space.
Meanwhile, a number of teams are looking to bring "institutional DeFi" - with its known counterparties and compliant custody arrangements - to the marketplace.
"Forget about the shareholders for a minute," Falls said. "Think about the consequences of the change in the influence over these infrastructure pieces.""
Out of curiosity I was looking at the evolution of IPFS hashes. They have gotten more complex. IPFS now uses base58btc exclusively. That's "btc" as in Bitcoin. Something like rhash, which has traditionally supported hashes used in peer-to-peer protocols, has no support for base58btc.
People are now trying to associate IPFS with "Web3". For example, check out this paper published a couple of weeks ago.
"Studying the workload of a fully decentralised Web3 system: IPFS"
That's blatantly wrong. IPFS supports 25 different base representations (https://github.com/multiformats/multibase/blob/master/multib...).
In fact, recently, two community members decided to implement a new base encoding with emojis for fun:
https://cid.ipfs.tech/#%F0%9F%9A%80%F0%9F%AA%90%E2%AD%90%F0%...
https://github.com/multiformats/multihash supports at the very least SHA1 SHA2-256 SHA2-512 SHA3/Keccak Blake2b-256/Blake2b-512/Blake2s-128/Blake2s-256 Blake3 and Strobe. Hashes in IPFS are being standardised through the IETF and W3C https://www.ietf.org/id/draft-multiformats-multihash-05.html.
If you need rhash, you are welcome to submit a PR! We also have a grants program you can use to be rewarded for this.