Interview with Raymond Fu — MOAC is Getting a Head Start on IPFS

Published in

MOAC

5 min readAug 1, 2018

(Article from : dameng info)

I want to ask on behalf of a lot of novices, what is IPFS? Can you explain it in a simple and easy to understand way?

Fu Xiannong: Of course. I’ll do my best to make it simple.

First, IPFS is a Peer to Peer (P2P) network protocol.

We all know that our modern internet is composed of several large centralized servers. If we want to download something, we have to get it from these servers. For instance, to download a video, we can go to a popular streaming site and view all kinds of trending videos. Usually the video is deleted or idle as soon as we finish watching it.

So, what does IPFS’ peer-to-peer network mean? It means that if someone else has seen the video, then I don’t need to go directly to the streaming site, I can download it directly from them.

This way, file transmission is transformed from a centralized server to a peer-to-peer network that’s shared by everyone.

Is this similar to downloading tools we’ve used before, like Xunlei? (Or BitTorrent?)

Fu Xiannong: That’s right, IPFS is very similar to Xunlei and VeryCD. They’re all P2P networks. But IPFS one-ups them: it hashes the document after dividing it into smaller pieces.

(A hash, or hash function, is the transformation of an input of any length by a hash algorithm into a fixed-length output. The output is equivalent to the hash value. Simply put, it’s the compression of information of any length into a summary of fixed length.)

And then the hash value is hashed once again, creating a final root hash. Using this root hash to search for documents ensures content accuracy.

Let’s take VeryCD for instance. It loses documents on occasion; and looking for lost documents is extremely inconvenient. You essentially have to redownload all the content over again.

So is the peer-to-peer transmission the same, it’s just that IPFS makes improvements in usability and security?

Fu Xiannong: Right, there are improvements there. This way, if you lose a file, you can use the hash value to look for it and discover which piece you’re missing.

It seems like it’d be hard to remember the hash value, just like a private key.

Fu Xiannong: I was just discussing this problem with some friends of mine. Hash values aren’t meant for people, so domain names will continue to exist in the future, same as document names. People obviously want to use the most comfortable way possible to view documents.

But, to bring up another point, the internet of the future isn’t just for people, it’s for things. Imagine for a minute that everyone’s fridge can get on the internet. Same goes for doorbells, etc… they can read hash values, so IPFS can become the interstellar network sharing system of the future. The next generation of the internet is the shared net of people and devices, so the people who created this protocol obviously had a lot of ambition

But hasn’t IPFS development slowed down a lot in the last few years?

Fu Xiannong: That’s true. The company that created the IPFS protocol has stagnated from 2014 to 2017. Why though? Because they didn’t have this incentives mechanism.

They also realized this, so they made an ICO, becoming the ICO champions of 2017 and raising 2.5 million dollars. They’re leading the industry now that they have financial support. Their ideas are huge. They have to be if you want to become an interstellar network. It takes a long time.

With industry giants like this already in the game, will MOAC’s microchain development give it a competitive advantage?

Fu Xiannong: DAPP storage needs have evolved with the rapid development of blockchain technology. The space at the front of the pack is empty right now, so why shouldn’t MOAC take it when its structure makes it so easy to do so?

This is our belief: There’s no way there’s only gonna be one company in the internet of the future. FileCoin won’t be the only one. Since MOAC can do it, we might as well occupy that empty place.

We have to be pioneers! Of course we know that we won’t be the only ones in the market. So, we made it into an open structure, with the hope that it’ll flourish in the future, and that everyone can work together to make this distributed storage platform better and better.

That’s why we at MOAC are doing this.

MOAC adopts an open structure. Will FileCoin do the same?

Fu Xiannong: We can only guess. Everyone knows that. But we know that the IPFS protocol is open source, and I don’t think they’ll change it into a closed source protocol. Open source means that everyone can protect it and improve it.

Can it be understood like this? Because IPFS is an open source protocol, the FileCoin team’s identity as a sponsor has become unimportant, and they’ve simply become one of the many teams that wants to this?

Fu Xiannong: Right. It could be understood like that. MOAC’s found an opportunity to take a stand on the shoulders of giants.

We have great respect for our competitors, we’ll certainly become technical partners in the future. But as far as business is concerned, we have to compete. We believe that this competition will be good for the consumer in the end.