IPFS, a constellation of tools for content addressing

three commitments

Not a platform to migrate to. A property you add.

Every tool in the IPFS constellation agrees on three principles. Pick one to see it in motion, and grab the building blocks you need.

Hash around, and find out.

Change one character. Watch the whole CID change.

file → CID

sha-256 · 0 bytes

↓ drop a file or edit

anatomy of a CID

change one character……the digest changes completely →

get started ·

↗ Read the specCID, UnixFS, DASLspecs.ipfs.tech ↗ Try DASLsimple profiledasl.ing

three problems, one protocol family

Addressing. Discovery. Transfer.

Self-certifying data publishing decomposes into three problems. IPFS solves each one independently and lets you swap the pieces. The CID is the only shared contract.

01 Addressing

→ What is the data?

Name data by what it is.

A Content Identifier (CID) is a self-describing cryptographic fingerprint. From a plain hash of a single byte to a Merkle DAG that proves an entire dataset, the CID is the contract between publisher and consumer. Anyone can mint one. Anyone can verify one.

CID self-describing hash UnixFS files & directories DASL a small, opinionated profile IPLD linked data

02 Discovery

→ Who has it?

Find who has it.

A CID alone does not move bytes. Discovery turns a hash into a list of providers willing to serve it. IPFS is plural here: a global open DHT, indexer-style HTTP routing, and newer routing systems compete and interoperate behind the same content-addressed contract.

Amino DHT open Kademlia DHT IPNI HTTP indexers at scale Delegated Routing HTTP API radicle-artifact P2P artifact discovery (Rust) Matadisco dataset discovery on atproto

03 Transfer

→ How do the bytes arrive?

Move the bytes.

Once a provider is found, fetch the blocks and verify them on arrival. The transport is interchangeable — HTTP gateways, libp2p with Bitswap, iroh-blobs over QUIC, RASL, even sneakernet. The CID is the integrity check; the wire is whatever fits the deployment.

HTTP Gateways request / response Bitswap block exchange over libp2p iroh-blobs QUIC-native transfer RASL streaming verifiable bytes