Just introduced the new version of the decentralized file system IPFS 0.5 (InterPlanetary File System) that forms a global versioned file storage implemented in the form of a P2P network.
A key feature of IPFS is content addressing, in which a link to access a file is directly related to its content (includes a cryptographic hash of the content) and that IPFS also has built-in version support.
File address cannot be arbitrarily renamedWithYou can only change after changing the content. Similarly, it is impossible to make a change to the file without changing the address (the old version will remain at the old address and the new one will be available through a different address, since the hash of the file's content will change).
What's new in IPFS 0.5?
In the new version performance and operation were significantly improved, since it was demonstrated in a public network based on IPFS that it exceeded 100,000 nodes and the changes in IPFS 0.5 reflect the adaptation of the protocol to work in such conditions.
The optimization focused mainly on improve content routing mechanisms responsible for data search, advertisement and retrieval, as well as improving the efficiency of the implementation of a distributed hash table (DHT), which provides information about the nodes that have the required data. Code related to DHT was almost completely rewritten, significantly speeding up content search and IPNS record definition operations.
En particular, the speed of add data operations has increased by 2 times, the announcement of new content on the network in 2.5 times, data extraction 2 to 5 times and content search 2 to 6 times.
Redesigned ad routing and delivery mechanisms enabled 2-3x network speeds due to more efficient use of bandwidth and background traffic transfer. In the next issue, it is planned to introduce transport based on the QUIC protocol, which will achieve even greater productivity gains due to reduced delays.
The work and reliability of the IPNS system has been accelerated (Interplanetary Naming System), used to create permalinks has ever-changing content. The new experimental transport of pubsub made it possible to speed up the delivery of IPNS records by 30-40 times when testing on a network with a thousand nodes (a special P2P network simulator was developed for experiments).
Layer performance Badger used to interact with the FS OS is duplicated and with support for asynchronous writes, Badger is now 25 times faster than the old flatfs layer. Performance improvements also affected the Bitswap mechanism, which is used to transfer files between nodes.
Of the functional improvements:
- TLS is used to encrypt connections between clients and servers.
- Subdomain support has appeared in the HTTP gateway: developers can put decentralized applications (dapps) and web content in isolated subdomains that can be used with hash addresses, IPNS, DNSLink, ENS, etc.
- A new / p2p namespace has been added to which data related to peer addresses has been extracted
- Blockchain-based ".eth" binding support was added, which will expand the use of IPFS in distributed applications.
- The IPFS-compliant protocol startup Protocol Labs is also developing the FileCoin project, which is a plug-in for IPFS. Whether IPFS allows participants to store, request and transfer data between them
- Filecoin is being developed as a platform based on blockchain technologies for permanent storage
- Filecoin allows users who have unused disk space to provide their networks for a fee, and users who need storage to purchase it. If the need for a place has disappeared, the user can sell it. In this way, a market is formed for storage space, the calculations of which are performed in Filecoin tokens formed by mining.
If you want to know more about this file system, you can consult the details in the following link.