Distributed Internet — IPFS & Blockchain.
InterPlanetary File System, that’s what IPFS means. It would be suitable for communicating between planets, because it offers some unique properties in its classical implementation:
- There is no server of origin; all content is distributed between different peers.
- Bandwidth savings, since you can get popular content from local peers.
- Higher download speed may be possible when working with multiple local peers.
- Original server doesn’t need to be online to access uploaded content; it will be available from peers.
- It is resistant to censorship; once the content is uploaded, it will remain online as long as someone is interested in it.
- In its classical implementation IPFS does not allow visitor tracking by saving files on their computers (e.g. cookies).
Imagine if you had a video file, which you would like to share with a friend far away. You would be able to save it on the Blockchain Router in an encrypted form and give a download link to your friend. The link would look like “ipfs://QmarHSr9aSNaPSR6G9KFPbj7dgfEqJfTk1y9B8pdwqK4Rq” and he would never know where you are located, because there is no IP address. If later you decide to share this file with public, you can decrypt it and advertise it online, so people would know it exists. In order to make it more human friendly, you can purchase a blockchain-based domain name, e.g. “Video.eth” and point it to “ipfs://QmarHSr9aSNaPSR6G9KFPbj7dgfEqJfTk1y9B8pdwqK4Rq”. Now all the router users who type “Video.eth/” in their browsers will see your video. Later you can delete the original content from your router and it will still remain available on the internet, because other peers will have it saved. In the event of a natural disaster or something similar, when there is no link between you and the people who want to watch your video, they will still be able to get it from the local peers. Also, if your video becomes really popular, you won’t have to get an expensive internet channel to support many views and downloads — pieces of your content (called “blocks”) will be distributed by others, saving you on bandwidth big time.
This magic is achieved through a different approach, compared to what we are all used to. Instead of referring to an object (video, in this case) by using server’s ip address (which eventually points to the location of the file), we search object by its content. And this ugly string of text “QmarHSr9aSNaPSR6G9KFPbj7dgfEqJfTk1y9B8pdwqK4Rq” is actually something similar to the summarized content of your video file, which is called “hash”. When you point a blockchain-based domain to a hash, you create a record in an Ethereum distributed ledger, similar to “video.eth” = “QmarHSr9aSNaPSR6G9KFPbj7dgfEqJfTk1y9B8pdwqK4Rq”. So now anyone typing Video.eth automatically receives a hash which is used to ask peers for a file.
When there is no central authority to manage domain names and hosting, system becomes highly censorship resistant. It is also worth pointing out that cookie tracking in a classical IPFS website implementation is impossible.
