Nowadays the Internet is based on the HTTP protocol, however, the inevitable shortcomings and shortcomings of the HTTP protocol have slowly failed to keep up with this era of data explosion. The current blockchain craze is a good example of this. Today's blockchain is like the Internet in the 1990s. As a new technology, blockchain has slowly brought great changes to the whole society. As the top of the food chain in the area of blockchain, IPFS technology is challenging the dominance of HTTP.
1. What is IPFS? IPFS (InterPlanetary File System Interstellar File System), proposed by Protocol Lab, is a new, distributed, content-based, hypermedia transfer protocol. IPFS supports the creation of fully distributed applications. It aims to use the network faster, more secure and more open. IPFS is a distributed file system whose goal is to connect all computing devices to the same file system, thus becoming a globally unified storage system. In a sense, this is very similar to the original goal of the Web, but it does so by swapping Git (distributed version control systems) data objects using the BitTorrent (BT bit flood file distribution protocol) protocol. IPFS is becoming a subsystem of the Internet today. By consolidating existing technologies (BitTorrent, DHT, Git, SFS) to create a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol, IPFS is trying to create a faster, safer, and more open next-generation Internet, with a global file storage system that is permanently available and can store data permanently. At the same time, the protocol has content addressing, versioning features, trying to supplement or even eventually replace the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP protocol) that has been with us for more than 20 years. IPFS is a protocol, is also a P2P network, it is similar to the current BT network, but has more powerful features, making IPFS has the potential to replace HTTP, and thus become a new generation of the Internet. This may sound weird and even crazy, but it's exactly what IPFS is doing.
2. What is Filecoin? Filecoin is a distributed data storage network and is also a blockchain cryptocurrency technology. It is a next-generation infrastructure that is used to host data in data storage networks anywhere in the world. The block chain data storage network encourages people with storage space to participate in a network in which they provide storage services and can be rewarded accordingly. Filecoin monetizes unused and excess storage around the world in distributed networks. Filecoin operates very similar to the market. Buyers are the people looking for storage space services, while sellers are storage providers. In this market, buyers are referred to as customers, while sellers are Filecoin miners. The trading unit is Filecoin and the market product is spacetime. Filecoins are used to pay Filecoin miners for the spacetime, which is a function of storing data over time. The process is completely anonymous, so clients and Filecoin miners don't know each other. In addition, the data is encrypted by hashes, divided into parts, and copied and propagated to the network. Each unique hash is used to link data to the entries table. Distributed storage is an essential part of driving future distributed applications, and Filecoin is building a network that anticipates this need.
3. The symbiotic relationship between IPFS and Filecoin IPFS networks have huge data storage needs, requiring a lot of nodes and distributed storage space, and requiring hard disks distributed around the world to join the work. If there is no incentive mechanism, how can we buy a hard disk for IPFS network sharing? So IPFS devised a set of rules to motivate user storage, the Filecoin protocol, and issued a token: FIL. As long as you help the IPFS network store files, you can get FIL, which is the source of our willingness to store files in our own homes. The FIL obtained is valuable because in this stored procedure, the FIL is combined with the real economy. User storage files need to pay FIL, miners to help user storage files, then get FIL. The FIL tokens can circulate in the Filecoin market and are in demand. Relationship between Filecoin and IPFS: IPFS is a network protocol, while Filecoin is an IPFS -based decentralized storage project. In a nutshell, the relationship between IPFS and Filecoin is similar to that between blockchain and bitcoin. Filecoin has now become a classic application of the IPFS protocol, forming a tight symbiotic relationship that can be difficult to develop without one partner. At the same time, Filecoin is not the only application of the IPFS protocol projects, there will be more applications of IPFS projects in the future to come to our attention. The Filecoin project can be understood as an incentive to run in an IPFS network. IPFS is a peer-to-peer network, and we all know that the more P2P participants you have, the faster you download. Therefore, IPFS needs more nodes to participate in it. But without a good incentive system, people will not be willing to contribute their hard drive and bandwidth resources, and Filecoin’s importance as an incentive system will be demonstrated.
As a rising star of the future Internet, IPFS is leading a new round of global technological and industrial transformation, and becoming the "source of technological innovation and mode innovation." IPFS & Filecoin is likely to be the underlying infrastructure of the blockchain world. We can foresee the future of Filecoin online decentralization trend will usher in explosive growth!
