Are IPFS and Filecoin the same thing? What is the relationship between them?

In the previous article, I shared with you the various drawbacks of the existing HTTP protocol under the centralized backbone network. As a hypermedia transmission protocol based on content addressing, versioning, and peer-to-peer, IPFS aims to supplement or even replace HTTP as the next generation of Internet underlying communication protocol. After reading the above, you should be able to roughly understand that IPFS is actually an underlying protocol and technology, not a blockchain project.

IPFS was launched as early as January 2015. It is an underlying Internet protocol and technology. Currently, there are millions of nodes in the world, and many people are familiar with IPFS. However, since Filecoin completed fundraising in 2017, it has not actually landed, and FIL tokens have not landed in the secondary market, so many friends are used to confusing IPFS and Filecoin, such as calling "Filecoin mining" "IPFS mining". Today, I will tell you about the relationship between IPFS and Filecoin?

1. What is IPFS?

IPFS (Inter-Planetary File System) is a content-addressable, versioned, peer-to-peer hypermedia transmission protocol that integrates P2P network technology, BitTorrent transmission technology, Git version control, self-certifying file system and other technologies. It is a new generation of communication protocol that is comparable to HTTP. IPFS allows participants in the network to store, retrieve and transmit verifiable data to each other. The goal is to create a more open, fast and secure Internet. It uses distributed hash tables to solve data transmission and location problems, and changes point-to-point single-point transmission into P2P transmission. The structure of stored data is a hash chain.

Since its launch in 2015, IPFS has over one million nodes. Currently, a large number of applications have been developed on IPFS or use IPFS as underlying storage, covering social networks, video, media applications, and public chains.

2. What is Filecoin?

Filecoin is a decentralized storage network and an incentive layer of IPFS that uses a blockchain token system. Filecoin builds a decentralized storage trading market for cloud storage based on IPFS, so it is also an important application on IPFS. Miners in the blockchain can obtain Filecoin by providing storage for customers; conversely, customers can hire miners to store or distribute data by spending Filecoin.

3. What is the relationship between Filecoin and IPFS?

We can see from the IPFS family tree that the Protocol Labs team adopted a highly modular integrated approach when developing IPFS, developing the IPFS project like building blocks. The development of the three modules IPLD, LibP2P, and Multiformats all serve the bottom layer of IPFS. IPFS applies the functions of these modules and integrates them into a containerized application that runs on independent nodes and is accessible to everyone in the form of Web services. As the incentive layer of IPFS, Filecoin makes the data of these applications valuable, and through incentive policies and economic models similar to Bitcoin, it allows more people to create nodes and use IPFS.

Both IPFS and Filecoin were created by the Protocol Labs team. As a network that advocates resource sharing, IPFS relies entirely on the free contributions of participants, making it difficult to ensure the stability of the website and to quickly promote its use. Each node only stores the data they consider important; there is no easy way to motivate more people to join the IPFS network or store specific data. Although the concept of "everyone for me, I for everyone" is good, without sufficient market incentives, even the best technology will be difficult to be quickly popularized. This is also an important reason why products such as BT downloads did not develop rapidly many years ago.

Filecoin is a decentralized storage project based on IPFS, which turns cloud storage into an algorithmic market. This market runs on a blockchain with a local protocol token. Miners can earn Filecoin by providing storage for customers; conversely, customers can hire miners to store or distribute data by spending Filecoin. The more the IPFS network is used, the greater the demand for Filecoin; the more Filecoin miners there are, the greater the support for the IPFS network. So IPFS and Filecoin have formed a symbiotic relationship. Their relationship is somewhat similar to the relationship between blockchain and Bitcoin. Filecoin was born to support the development of IPFS, and IPFS also needs Filecoin to enrich its ecology. The more IPFS is used, the greater the demand for Filecoin; the more Filecoin miners there are, the greater the support for IPFS.

Filecoin uses the Proof of Spacetime (PoSt) mechanism. It is actually an upgraded version of PoS, which replaces the Proof of Stake with the Proof of Storage. It replicates two important mechanisms: Proof of Spacetime and Proof of Time. Through the Proof of Spacetime mechanism, the decentralized storage network built by Filecoin can effectively prevent Sybil attacks, outsourcing attacks, and generation attacks, ensuring the security and stability of the network.

When Filecoin and IPFS go together, Filecoin is an incentive layer running on top of IPFS. IPFS has huge storage and node requirements. It is well known that the more p2p network nodes there are, the faster the download speed. If there is no incentive mechanism, who is willing to contribute so many nodes and storage space? So Filecoin came. Filecoin can provide a large number of nodes for IPFS worldwide. At the same time, Filecoin itself also has a huge distributed storage space, which solves the storage problem of IPFS. Therefore, IPFS has more advantages compared with HTTP.

Finally, to summarize, IPFS is a content-addressed, versioned, peer-to-peer hypermedia transmission protocol. It is an underlying Internet technology, not a specific project, and even has little to do with blockchain; Filecoin is a blockchain project based on a distributed storage network under the IPFS protocol. It is currently the only incentive layer of the IPFS protocol. After the Filecoin mainnet is launched, the incentives for users and applications on the IPFS network will be based on Filecoin transactions. So the mining we are talking about refers to mining Filecoin. I hope you can first understand the relationship between IPFS and Filecoin.