What is IPFS?
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a peer-to-peer distributed file system. The connected computing devices all have the same file management mode. In a sense, this concept is very similar to the original concept of the Web, but in fact IPFS is more like a single Bittorrent user group that forwards Git targets to each other. IPFS has the qualities to become an internet system. It can be fully configured or even replaced by proper configuration. This makes people feel unbelievable, but in fact IPFS can do more.
HTTP flaws
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is a unified global information format protocol, and its formulation provides specifications for distributing and displaying information. HTTP minimizes the cost of publishing information. HTTP was one of the greatest inventions in history, but it collapsed several times due to lack of distribution and durability. It is therefore difficult to become a permanent carrier of human knowledge. HTTP performance is basically flawed. The way HTTP distributions content is flawed. Despite experiencing performance tuning, CA certificate SSL, and other means, it has not been able to improve. HTTP/2's improvement alleviates the bug to some extent, but the conservative upgrade does not To solve the problem fundamentally, it highlights the aging of HTTP. Therefore, we must adopt a new basic protocol instead of HTTP to govern the network environment and provide better Web services. I very much hope that IPFS can become that alternative.
Even if you have not read the specific content of the HTTP protocol, most people understand what the 404 error means. It is the error code of the HTTP protocol, indicating that the web page is not in the specified location of the server. The sooner a web page is born, the more likely it is to respond to a 404 error.
The problem of HTTP centralization becomes more and more serious
In order to avoid the situation in which data is constantly eroded, people began to rely on the use of a more well-managed large-scale central server to obtain reliability by making a large number of redundant backups. This plan is very effective in the short term, but it has created a new series of problems in the long-term operation. What people originally wanted to build was a non-centralized Web, but the Web that is used today is increasingly focused on a few server centers. As a result, organizations like the US National Security Agency can obtain the data of most users by intercepting the communication information of these server centers.
These features enable IPFS to replace HTTP?
- When a file is added to the IPFS network, a uniquely encrypted hash value is assigned to the content based on the calculation. This will change the way we use the domain name to access the Internet.
- Provide a historical version of the file controller (such as git) and let multiple nodes use to save different versions of the file.
- By using the incentive of File Coin, each node is motivated to store data.
IPFS competitors
The IPFS project is really slow to develop. Compared to other blockchain projects, the progress of IPFS can really make people anxious.
Introduce the existing blockchain project similar to IPFS today. Here's a brief introduction.
Storj
Official Website: https://storj.io/
White Paper: https://storj.io/storj.pdf
Token symbol: STORJ
ICO Date: 2017.5.19-2017.5.25
ICO raises funds: 30 million U.S. dollars
Total tokens: 500 million
Contract address: 0xb64ef51c888972c908cfacf59b47c1afbc0ab8ac
Blockchain Browser: https://etherscan.io/token/Storj
Storj is a district-centric cloud storage platform. The business process is that the user pays rent space from Storj, and the miners share their own disk to obtain tokens. Since Storj uses the ERC20 protocol, the token address uses its own Ethereum address.
Factors that affect mining include: the size of the shared hard disk space, the speed of uploading and downloading, the reliability and availability of Storj nodes, and the amount of space required.
Burst
Token symbol: BURST
Official website: https://www.burst-coin.org
Current Price: 0.026957 USD
Total: 1.8 billion
Burst transfers tokens at no cost and can conduct anonymous transactions through a powerful global shared infrastructure. Burst as the first Proof-of-capacity project is still of great significance.
According to the official statement mining is very simple, just download the AIO client on it.
Genaro
Token symbol: GNX
Current Exchange Price: 0.288189 USD
ICO Date: 2017.11.17~11.30
Official website: https://genaro.network
White Paper: https://genaro.network/en/documentation/whitepaper
Genaro is the first distributed storage area network with Turing's complete public chain
Turing's complete meaning is that Turing machines can be implemented to solve all computational problems.
Genaro is developed and operated by Genaro Ltd, a non-profit foundation in Singapore. The goal of the Genaro ecosystem is to build Blockchain 3.0, a next-generation blockchain platform that will help blockchain applications land.
Decentralized Storage Network Consensus: SPoR (Sentinel Proof of Retrievability)
Public-chain consensus mechanism: proof of stake (as with Ethereum)
MaidSafe
Token symbol: maid
Total: about 4.5 billion
Official website address: https://maidsafe.net/
Project Source Code Home Page: https://github.com/maidsafe-archive
Consensus mechanism: Proof of Resouce, resources include: CPU, storage, bandwidth, online duration
It was learned from the official forum that when the crowdfunding was completed in 2014, the project sold all the coins. In other words, when you later dig a mine, you can only get coins from transactions. You can't dig coins like you think of mining them (officially known as Farmer). The use of blockchain is actually a trading market, where users provide resources. Miners get paid.