Storage
Research Papers
Academic and industry research
IPFS - Content Addressed, Versioned, P2P File System
Juan Benet
The IPFS white paper presents a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol designed to make the web faster, safer, and more open by replacing location-based addressing with content-based addressing. Instead of fetching data from a central server identified by its network location (HTTP), IPFS utilizes cryptographic hashes to identify content by its unique fingerprint. This architecture enables data integrity and persistence, as changing any part of the data results in a different identifier. The paper details the integration of technologies like Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs) for routing, Merkle Directed Acyclic Graphs (Merkle DAGs) for structuring data, and BitTorrent-inspired block exchange for peer-to-peer transfers. By allowing users to host and serve content from their own nodes, IPFS decentralizes the infrastructure of the internet, mitigating the vulnerabilities of centralized points of failure and censorship. The resulting system is inherently version-controlled and resistant to link rot. This research is foundational for the decentralized web (Web3), providing the primary storage layer upon which many distributed applications and NFT platforms are currently built.
Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network and Market
Protocol Labs
The Filecoin white paper describes a decentralized storage network that functions as an algorithmic market for data storage and retrieval. Building upon the technical foundations of IPFS, Filecoin introduces a cryptoeconomic layer that incentivizes participants to contribute storage space and reliability to the network. The system introduces two novel consensus mechanisms: Proof of Replication (PoRep) and Proof of Spacetime (PoSt). PoRep ensures that a storage provider has physically dedicated space for a specific piece of data, while PoSt provides continuous proof that the data remains stored over time. Through these proofs, the network achieves verifiable storage, creating a robust decentralized cloud infrastructure. Users pay for storage in the native FIL token, and providers compete for these contracts based on cost, speed, and capacity. By creating an open market for storage, Filecoin aims to lower costs and provide censorship-resistant infrastructure for the future of the internet. The document serves as an important synthesis of distributed systems engineering and game-theoretic economic design, demonstrating how to solve the 'proof of retrievability' problem at scale.