Drupal on IPFS: DrupalCon Nashville 2018 Session
I have had the opportunity to present a session on Drupal and IPFS at DrupalCon Nashville 2018. The idea behind Interplanetary File System has been fascinating, luring a lot of attention and scrutiny.
The session was interesting in a way that centralization is at the core of Drupal’s workflow as compared to IPFS’ decentralized nature. Then, why did we start exploring the possible benefits of their integration?
What’s wrong with Centralization?
One of the objectives of the session was to understand the negative impacts of centralization.
We have been riding on the success of centralized system ever since the birth of world wide web. It has been a major player in the digitized business organisations and has had an unprecedented role in easing off their governance.
But we can’t overlook the fact that there are repercussions which come with the implementation of business models with a centralized administration.
So we took it as a challenge and tried to highlight the lows of this centralized dependency.
We tried to emphasize how grave the situation might turn out if the central nodes go dark. Be it the issue of posting and sharing seamless content with complete freedom. Or its sluggish nature when multiple devices trying to access data from the same channel leading to speed reduction.
Apparently, there are compromises which we make to ensure that the business goes on. But it should not be at the cost of any critical impact.
This is how we strived to search for a viable solution to all such ordeals. IPFS, which has its working principle based on blockchain technology, can prove to be a great alternative.
Still, in its early stages, Interplanetary File System is here to stay!
Taking a Decentralized Route
One of our motives in the session was to encourage the open-source community to embrace IPFS.
We have taken our baby steps to understand IPFS better. A protocol for a peer-to-peer method of data sharing, it has innumerable advantages that are sure to raise eyebrows of digital firms.
We discussed the major benefits that are possibly going to disrupt the way information is accessed and distributed. We talked about some of the business enterprises like Uport who have taken a plunge and adopted the decentralized workflow.
As I said in the session, in the end it is your turn to take a detour and adopt this disrupting technology.
Understanding Interplanetary File System
We went a step further and delved into the data structure behind this amazing technology.
We discussed the working of IPFS through a tree structure that showed how the integrity and redundancy of the files are taken care of.
Check out the session in the video below.
Where does Drupal come into picture?
We looked for ways to make them work in tandem. Drupal, which empowers the content authors to produce content endlessly, can be intertwined with IPFS for an awesome digital experience.
Is that even possible?
Helping Archivists to store cornucopia of data to aiding Service Providers as a global Content Delivery Network (CDN), perhaps this can be the best use case and there are tons of possibilities further.
Of course, there are a plenitude of challenges that come with its execution. For instance, unlike Drupal, IPFS has intricacies in its content relationships.
We want the Drupal community to propose a way out and overcome such challenges and make the world a better space.
The digital arena is basking in the comfort of centralized business administration. In the session we tried to embolden the open source community to embrace IPFS.
Join us in brainstorming and reaping the benefits of their amalgamation. Drop in your mail at hello@opensenselabs.com in case you want to discuss it further.
The session was jointly presented by Vidhatanand and Devanshu Arora at DrupalCon Nashville 2018.
