Pioneering Decentralized IPFS Pinning Services
It is with great joy that we are announcing the world’s first Decentralized IPFS Pinning Service. And this just a week after pioneering with the launch of the first ever NFT Backup DApp. Two unique products to power the DWeb (Decentralized Web) of tomorrow, allowing anyone to store data on the Interplanetary File System without using any centralized entity.
A common misconception is that IPFS stores data forever by default. IPFS combined with Aleph.im make it happen for the first time ever in a fully decentralized way.
New to IPFS and “Pinning”? Read our lightning intro on IPFS.
TLDR For Doers
- Pin your data on https://account.aleph.im/#/ipfs
- That data resides on aleph.im decentralized storage
- That data is also pinned to IPFS as many times as we have nodes on our network (48 nodes as of today)
- Decentralized Storage = unstoppable, censorship-resistant, highly available, etc
TLDR For Skeptics
- As of now, IPFS Pinning Services are all partially or fully centralized
- If the entity goes out of business, then your data might be lost forever
- Aleph.im solves this. Decentralized storage is incentivized and designed for the long run and natively pins data on IPFS.
- More questions? Check out our Decentralized IPFS Pinning FAQ at the end of this article.
Decentralized Pinning Services To Remove Limitations Of Competing Centralized Alternatives
As explained in our short explainer article on IPFS, existing pinning services are centralized which means they can go out of business or have any typical issue faced by a centralized entity. When that happens, your data gets unpinned and might get lost forever.
Data stored on IPFS getting lost has been reported countless times now, see here, here, here and here.
With pinning services provided by decentralized projects, the internet enters a new era. Data stored via IPFS, the leading decentralized storage protocol, can now be pinned via decentralized apps powered by decentralized assets.
This makes for an extremely robust storage solution that can help all Apps and Protocols to transition to a fully decentralized stack.
Guide: How To Use Our IPFS Pinning DApp
The IPFS Pinning DApp is live and running! Check it out now on https://account.aleph.im/#/ipfs
Follow our step-by-step guide below.
Fund requirements
a. You need to hold ALEPH tokens in your wallet
b. The tokens are not “spent”. They only need to stay in your wallet to guarantee the relevant storage capacity.
c. As of writing (April 5th 2021), 1 ALEPH stored in your wallet lets you store 3MB of data. So if you have 100 ALEPH, you can store up to 300MB.
d. If the tokens are moved from your wallet, your data might get deleted (garbage collected)
Note: we are polishing the tokenomics incentives for this storage mechanism as there are many corner cases
Let’s get started!
1/ Connect Your Wallet
2/ In The Left Column, Click On “IPFS Pinning” (or directly via https://account.aleph.im/#/ipfs)
3/ In The Top Right, Click On “Public Upload” and then “File”
4/ Sign the transaction (if you are using a ledger, connect it and sign from your ledger too)
Voilà! You can now share the IPFS link and/or the CID as indicated in the above screenshot.
Your uploaded file is now stored in a decentralized manner and on IPFS for anyone else to pin it too!
What Does This DApp Do?
What we provide is the ability to simultaneously upload data to IPFS and aleph.im networks.
When you upload data to IPFS, it needs to be “pinned” on IPFS so that it stays online, otherwise when your computer shuts down your data isn’t available anymore. When you use our IPFS Pinning DApp, aleph.im network takes care of keeping the data online on IPFS — pinned to IPFS.
Use Cases
1/ Storing static websites. Our own official website is on IPFS+aleph.im
2/ Storing the front-end of complex DApps. The front-end of Uniswap and Aave are running on IPFS for instance. The front-end of many other big applications are running on IPFS.
3/ Storing NFT metadata. Store images, sound, animations and videos associated with any NFT. Via our NFT Backup DApp or manually via our IPFS Pinning DApp.
4/ Store and organize files. Via our Dropbox-like DApp for instance.
For any given use-case, you can also do it either manually via our dapp or programmatically via our Javascript API.
Aleph.im + IPFS = Eternal Storage
The ideal solution for eternal storage is fully decentralized so that it can be unstoppable, censorship resistant, highly resilient and always available.
Rings a bell? Yes, sounds like what a crypto-powered project could do.
Designed to last forever, blockchain projects with the right crypto-economic incentives have the unique ability to reach all the listed above requirements and much more.
“Another day, another breakthrough for aleph.im and the Web3 space. We’re so proud to be part of this decentralized revolution. Centralized Pinning Services have huge shortcomings, a decentralized solution was desperately needed and aleph.im is now providing that feature too.” — Jonathan Schemoul aka Moshe Malawach, CEO at aleph.im
Essentially, aleph.im becomes the incentivization layer that IPFS is missing. Note that IPFS was intentionally designed this way (a feature, not a bug) and now anyone is racing to build the engines that will keep data on IPFS forever.
In our case, all our Core Channel Nodes (the “master” nodes you may call them) run an IPFS Node so whenever data gets stored on aleph.im network, it automatically gets pinned by all these nodes.
As of writing (April 7th 2021), we have 48 nodes running. That’s huge considering the our market cap. Many billion dollars projects do not even come close to this.
So as of writing, the data gets pinned 48 times when you upload data via our IPFS Pinning DApp.
Still not safe enough? Well, you can still pin this data using other decentralized or centralized pinning services on top. 😄
FAQ
FAQ Of Aleph.im IPFS Pinning Services
I don’t know much about IPFS. Do you mind clarifying how IPFS works?
Read our IPFS 2min Article Explainer and you will effortlessly get it.
Where does the data get saved?
Both on our nodes (for files) and IPFS (an IPFS node is bundled in the aleph.im network nodes).
What if aleph.im goes bust?
If aleph.im goes bust, the network (and your stored data) will still run as the nodes powering the system are not owned by aleph.im
Google Drive is cheaper than aleph.im I believe. Right?
Nope. Right now you “pay” to store your data by holding tokens in your wallet. These tokens are NOT spent. You still own them. And actually, you can even earn more by staking at the same time.
You mean that I can use the same tokens to get storage capacity and for staking, so earn more tokens?
That’s correct. The same tokens can be used (i) to get storage capacity allowance and (ii) to earn more tokens.
You can either keep the earned tokens to get more storage capacity or sell them for profit.
What’s the current APY for staking ALEPH tokens?
As of writing (April 6th 2021), 16.51% APY.
It’s indicated at the top of our Staking DApp.
How much does it cost to store on aleph.im storage?
You need to hold ALEPH tokens in your wallet. The tokens are not “spent”. They only need to stay in your wallet to guarantee the relevant storage capacity.
As of writing (April 6th 2021), 1 ALEPH stored in your wallet lets you store 3MB of data. So if you have 100 ALEPH, you can store up to 300MB.
What happens if I store data on your IPFS Pinning DApp and then move the funds away from my wallet?
If the tokens are moved from your wallet, your data might get deleted (garbage collected).
We are working on a long-term solution to make this less error-prone.
How do I run a static website on IPFS ‘plus’ aleph.im?
You go to the folder of your website content, you add it to IPFS via our IPFS Pinning DApp. Then you get an IPFS CID, which is your folder’s unique identifier (the hash) and then you can use Cloudflare IPFS to set your domain to point to that IPFS content (you bridge your domain to your website content stored on IPFS). More information here (skip the part about adding your content to ipfs as you already did it and pinned it on the aleph.im network nodes).
How do I run a dynamic website on aleph.im?
If your DApp needs more than static content, you can use our Decentralized Database feature (via our API) to offer more. More on this in another article.
What is the difference between aleph.im+IPFS and Arweave for permanence?
Well on our “hold aleph and get storage” it’s similar. However, aleph.im is compatible with IPFS natively on all nodes whereas arweave the IPFS compatibility is limited and through gateways (partially centralized).
So you are the first ever project to launch Decentralized IPFS Pinning Services?
Yes. That’s right.
Got more questions?
Contact us on our Telegram Community Chat.
Recommended Reads
Decentralized Storage On Aleph.im
- Aleph.im Blog: IPFS Explained In 2min
- Aleph.im Blog: An NFT Backup Dapp To Protect Your NFTs
- Aleph.im Blog: Fully Decentralized NFTs With Aleph.im
Exploring IPFS And Aleph.im
About Aleph.im
Aleph.im’s core mission is to help re-decentralized the web. We help apps and protocols to strip off the centralized parts of their stack, reaching a fully decentralized architecture. Aleph.im achieves this by providing decentralized databases (including file storage), computation and a decentralized identification (DID) framework. You can think of aleph.im as a decentralized AWS or Firebase. Aleph.im is currently focused on supercharging NFTs and DeFi.
