The IPFS Pinning Summit, a virtual event held a few days ago, showcased the current state of infrastructure in IPFS, Filecoin and Web3. Key players in the IPFS space gathered together to share what they’ve been working on, in addition to what they’ve got cookin’ in the kitchens.
Not only did I learn new things, but I also got a better pulse on where the ecosystem is at… and where it’s going next.
Let’s talk about that.
Day 1: The Present
The day included key players in the IPFS pinning space, and Web3 more generally, giving talks about their current and upcoming products. Companies such as Textile, Infura, Pinata, Unstoppable Domain and Fleek (Go Fleek!) were all in attendance.
Other highlights included a presentation on IPFS 0.5, a major performance upgrade to IPFS, and a presentation on how to send Filecoin transactions which reminded me of Ethereum transactions with gas cost, nonces, whatnot. Of course, the always informative Juan Benet made an appearance and had plenty to say during both days.
All in all, an interesting day which successfully synthesised the current state of the IPFS ecosystem.
Day 2: The Future
This day was aimed entirely on the future, including discussions on API standardisation, Filecoin and emerging business opportunities.
What really really caught my attention was a comparison made by Juan Benet between the IPFS Web3 vision and modern cloud architecture, describing what roles Filecoin clients and IPFS nodes will play. It cleared up my misconception about Filecoin and IPFS.
The idea of Filecoin clients vs IPFS nodes is that of slow vs fast, cold storage vs hot storage, similar to the modern web infrastructure of the likes of Google, with their data centers, edge POPs and edge Nodes.
Look at this summary of Google’s cloud infrastructure.
At launch, the Filecoin network is expected to be comparable in performance to Amazon S3 Glacier, which can hold large amounts of low-cost data, but is slow, and is appropriate for archiving data. IPFS nodes, on the other hand, are meant to be comparable in performance to the much faster Amazon S3.
This was stressed by a talk by Textile about Powergate, an IPFS tool that spins up cold storage in the form of a Filecoin Lotus client and hot storage in the form of an IPFS node.
After upcoming improvements to Filecoin, Filecoin will compete with Amazon S3 performance-wise, backed by even faster IPFS nodes taking advantage of content proximity. An aspect of Filecoin holding it back is the cost of computing of proofs, an area no doubt still being researched and improved.
I would love to learn more about that in the future.
Also, IPFS Discover was mentioned which seems really cool, especially for those interested in becoming Filecoin miners.
Takeaway from the Event
The main takeaway from the event is that the IPFS ecosystem is flourishing, yet is still small. There is plenty more space for more players, and business opportunities abound, especially with Filecoin around the corner.
Without a doubt those in the field today are bound to remain pillars of the IPFS ecosystem as it reaches greater maturity.
In the meantime, watch out for the next few months and years, folks. We’re in for quite a ride…
NOTE: The recordings for the talks are not online yet. They will probably be uploaded on the IPFS Youtube Channel soon.