> The only reason it’s decentralized is because blockchain and crypto was hype 10 years ago.
IPFS is not "blockchain" or "crypto"(currency).
It's much closer to git-over-bittorrent. Note that both of those things were decentralised long before "blockchain" and "crypto" existed.
The makers of IPFS also made a crypto thing called Filecoin; but that's a different project. Avoiding IPFS because of crypto is like avoiding the Web because of social media.
Deeper OS integration would be nice, but harder to roll out. I think the plan early on was to make something useful/generic/agnostic enough that a couple of big browsers would add support, then it could try becoming a Web standard.
Unfortunately that hasn't panned out; but it still feels more feasible than getting Microsoft and Apple to add it to their OS network stacks.
> a libertarian decentralized P2P E2EE communication project
Your argument makes sense for Freenet (though I'd personally defend that project too); but not so much for IPFS.
Firstly, IPFS doesn't have any encryption (E2E or otherwise).
Also, Freenet spreads data around the network (for robustness and plausible-deniability), so the peers providing a file are not the peers which inserted it. IPFS does no such thing: if you want your content to remain available, you'd better be running an IPFS node that provides it.
Either way, it feels like a pretty bad idea to host dodgy stuff on IPFS.
IPFS is much closer to HTTP. The difference is that content is immutable, and can be re-hosted by anyone that happens to have a copy (e.g. no need for mirrors, etc.).
(Note that HTTP was invented to disseminate physics research; not CSAM)
> Protocol Labs is an innovation network driving breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward. PL connects more than 750 tech startups, funds, accelerators, foundations, open source projects, service providers, and other organizations.
What happened to them? Seems like they drank their own "Web3" Fla-Vor-Aid.
I don't understand. Billions of non-technical users are loading URLs like `https://cdn.foo/?guid=deadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeef` all the time. Why would they care if those URLs became `ipfs://deadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeef` instead?
Pronounceable names can point to a content address, the same way they can point to an IP address. For example, https://dnslink.dev points a DNS name to a content address; git refs point to git objects; etc.
This is irrelevant. The point I'm responding to is this:
>I think something like IPFS is definitely needed. There is nothing stopping you from distributing a webapp on bittorrent but you'll also need to add a README for instructions on how to run the webapp on localhost so a browser can render it. So thats not something that any non-technical user wants to do.
This quoted comment assumes there's a web app that is sufficiently complex as to require a readme to run it, but that's too complex for normal people.
But somehow, a link that looks like `ipfs://12340-9q5ui1j2;lk3rjq;ladksfj` won't scare those same people off?
I agree that IPNS has always seemed a bit naff; but alternatives naming systems can be used too (if your system's name resolver can understand them); e.g. this uses pkarr addresses for IPFS content: http://www.chriswarbo.net/blog/2026-05-08-pkdnslink.html
Regarding an "update path", GNS has support for that built-in; though I've not been able to try it myself, since I can't get GNUNet to bootstrap :-(
I always thought that they should have used ENS instead of whatever coin they ended up making. GNS is cool but IIRC (years ago) it had no incentive mechanism which is I think where a lot of these solutions fall down. Even imaginary "ratio points" that p2p file sharing sites have being using for years work better than "donate your resources out of the goodness of your heart".
Half baked comment but I feel like many of these efforts are too purist. Sure they need to think more carefully about incentives from a systemic angle but also why not accept a hybrid design that doesn't depend on those in the first place? For example plenty of people operate their own nameservers for their own websites to use, or spin up a VPS to support [thing] they make use of. So at a minimum I'm sure webring-style infra where you cover for your friends and they cover for you would work quite well.
For a real world example of a hybrid approach that works see bittorrent where torrents can optionally contain urls that point to alternate download sources in order to speed up the initial seeding phase.
My personal opinion is that any notion of "incentive mechanisms" for IPFS is bullshit: whether Filecoin, or otherwise.
There is already a perfectly good incentive mechanism: if someone wants to host some data, they can; and if nobody wants to host it, it doesn't get hosted.
That's worked perfectly well for HTTP, without any shitcoin needed. The advantage of IPFS is that its URLs resolve to anybody who cares enough to host that data; so links will only 404 when nobody cares (unlike HTTP, which relies on a single point of failure).
Indeed, I use LLMs on some hobby Racket programs, and for Emacs Lisp, and it always messes up parentheses; then burns tokens trying to count them over and over (feels like "the number or rs in strawberry" problem).
I've found https://github.com/shcv/parenmedic to be somewhat helpful, which diagnoses parentheses issues based on when they disagree with indentation, rather than simply counting. The fact this works indicates that LLMs are paying more attention to whitespace than "actual structure".
Not sure about DOS versions, but Worms: The Director's Cut is a heavily-expanded version of the original: more weapons, custom levels (allowing 16 colours instead of 8, IIRC), etc. Highly recommended!
