The community seems to be getting very testy about storage. Storj is raising more money and Swarm is on the verge of release.
I do not really understand all the differences between these architecture. I hear more people talking about all these different options.
Here are some of the emotions (and accusations) being displayed:
Does anyone here have views of the pros/cons?
You’re right. Things are getting testy. I hope we can shelter IPFS and libp2p from the worst of it.
WRT comparing IPFS with those incentivized storage networks, it’s not a valid comparison to make because all of those other systems are designed to let you pay someone to store stuff for you. IPFS treats that as an out of band concern. IPFS and libp2p operate at a more fundamental layer of the web, making all of this Decentralized Web innovation possible for everyone. If all of those networks used IPFS and/or libp2p it would be a good thing.
There is a sister project you should know about: Filecoin is designed to let you either pay the network to store stuff for you or to get paid for storing other people’s stuff. If you want a comparison against those other storage networks you should compare with Filecoin.
Personal opinion: I’m not convinced that we should include Filecoin discussion in the IPFS forums. As you point out, there are a lot of heated discussions going on in that space right now – discussions that are not directly related to helping people use and understand IPFS, it’s APIs, its underlying libraries or any of the explosively powerful concepts involved.
That said, there will be many updates about Filecoin over the coming weeks, leading up to the Filecoin sale. Those updates will provide plenty of information.
I think what is driving this is the ICO space which is on fire, and also the BTC and ETH pricing is totally upward. Storj just raised 22M USD in their ICO. With this much money in play, people are getting focused.
Yes. That is true. It’s also not directly relevant to helping people use IPFS. The internet is full of places for people to talk about ICOs and cryptocurrency speculation. This discussion forum is not one of them. I want to keep it that way.
Please use this forum to discuss IPFS, libp2p IPLD, multiformats, etc. along with the related underlying concepts and/or the amazing things community members are doing with them.
That is a funny thing to state when you wrote:
“That said, there will be many updates about Filecoin over the coming weeks, leading up to the Filecoin sale. Those updates will provide plenty of information.”
You mentioned the “Filecoin sale.” I did not initiate any comments about ICOs - you did.
I do not like double standards. In fact I loath them. I see them a lot. If you think that ICO comments are not useful, then don’t start bring the Filecoin sale into my question about comparison of P2P storage systems, especially in the context of you saying it is “sister project” to IPFS.
My interest is in IPFS and trying to get it to work and deciding what systems to use, I asked a question and you started writing about the Filecoin sale. I just googled it, and Filecoin is all over the Web with a clear commercial interest.
It sounds like you are just hijacking my question about file systems, to promote the Filecoin ICO. Then saying you do not want any discussion about competing systems. That is exactly the sentiment I saw in stackexchange when a valid question about storage was hijacked and used to make accusations of “fake news” and led to someone saying:
“Thank you for your comment. Could you give me more details about Ipfs and swarm. It seems indeed that the previous answer is quite biased”
You are not entitled to hijack my question about storage systems to promote a Filecoin ICO and then tell me to shut up when I respond to that by mentioning the ICO market.
I’m sorry I gave you the wrong impression. It seems I achieved exactly the opposite of what I intended. I’m personally skeptical about whether we should include Filecoin discussion on these forums. In one respect, the technology of Filecoin (along with ipfs-cluster, etc) is one part of our answer to the question that comes up constantly in the IPFS space: How can I get other nodes to store my IPFS content? In that sense, the topic belongs here. In all the other senses, it doesn’t. This is a hard line to walk. If you look back into the history of discussions in the ipfs github repositories and in the logs of the ipfs IRC channel, people get really frustrated when we don’t talk about this part of the equation.
I thought my first response to your question would strike the right balance there – explain how it doesn’t make sense to compare IPFS with incentivized storage networks, acknowledge that Filecoin is something you could compare, share my misgivings about the topic, and provide the information that if you do want to learn more about that particular technology there will be more information available soon.
I want this forum to be a venue for people to find answers, get support, give support, and create a sense of community. That’s why I spent a good part of my Saturday morning answering people’s technical questions and requests for guidance on this forum. (A number of those questions were from you.) I don’t want to see any positive, supportive community momentum to be burned away by the heat of all this other stuff.
I think everyone knows that the original ideas of decentralisation are being hijacked. I will not try and debate this here. But there are a lot of genuine projects which have real aims and objectives. I am not interested in trading cryptocurrencies, I only own less than 1 ETH for testing, and I have never purchased any tokens.
My interest is in building Zillerium which uses the original decentralisation concepts which Berners-Lee himself so actively endorsed in the early 1990s. I have had a huge interest in Zillerium, and my project is aimed at improving lives by promoting trade (trading goods). I have worked tirelessly on the project without any money.
I need a storage system and that is the context of my involvement in IPFS.