Celebrate Q1 in the IPFS Community

A quick look back at what we accomplished together in the InterPlanetary File System (opens new window) galaxy and beyond! 🚀

January! A new year 🎉

The new IPFS Docs beta went live
IPFS now has documentation that is redesigned, with a simple, clean interface, has better navigation, and most importantly, reintroduced a key feature: the search functionality. Read about it on the blog (opens new window).

Collaborative clusters are here
The first set of public collaborative clusters (opens new window) and the first iteration of the clusters site went live this month. For full documentation on how to set up and operate clusters, see ipfscluster.io/documentation.

go-ipfs 0.4.23 was released 🚢
Just a small, tidy patch release (opens new window) with some critical fixes before 0.5.0 ships.

ipfs-update got an update!
Your favourite tool for updating go-ipfs got a shiny new update (opens new window) of its own. Windows users should like it a lot.

February! The plot thickens 🤔

The Async Await Refactor and Other Big Refactors appear on the horizon
Fortunately, we pulled together a migration guide, as well as several explainers as to the changes coming (opens new window) and the method for pulling them off (opens new window).

js-libp2p 0.27 released 🚢
The Async Await refactor lands first in js-libp2p (opens new window).

IPFS goes to Denver!
First, the IPFS community gathered, courtesy of Cryptorado, for the first Decentralized Networks Summit (opens new window) to share our learnings and use cases. If you missed it, you can check out the captured live stream here (opens new window).

Second, several of our favorite collaborators and a few of the IPFS team made it to ETHDenver (opens new window), where approximately half of the hackathon participants used IPFS (opens new window), including 3 of the winners.

The IPFS Roadmap for 2020
Content Routing becomes our North star (opens new window), but that’s not all! Plus, check out the awesome diagram of our ecosystem.

js-ipfs 0.41.0 released 🚢
The Async Await refactor finally lands in js-ipfs internals (opens new window), the result of a huge refactor, and cause for much celebration!

Our collaboration with Netflix leads to new improvements to IPFS Bitswap
Our mission—a container distribution challenge Netflix wanted to address (opens new window)—how to efficiently pull container images in a large scale, multi-region environment. But how?

Fleek debuts as the easiest way to build, deploy, and host websites & apps on IPFS
Formerly Terminal, Fleek (opens new window) arrives on the scene to provide everything you need to build fast modern websites hosted on IPFS. See their many tutorials (opens new window) ranging from using Jekyll to Wordpress, Next.js and more!

Berty releases gomobile-ipfs 📱
Finally, a library that aims to provide packages for Android, iOS, and React-Native that allow one to run and use an IPFS node on mobile devices. Read the full announcement here (opens new window).

Textile ships Buckets: simple, dynamic data storage and management for IPFS
Built with IPFS and Threads (opens new window), Buckets provides users with simple to use, interoperable, and dynamic data folders shared over IPFS. Plus a few magical features. ✨

Fission begins testing a Discourse IPFS Plugin
Add a Discourse forum plugin (opens new window) to use IPFS to store files, using the Fission web API.

Temporal launches S3 ontop of IPFS
This new functionality allows you to do things like stream video on IPFS, host a dynamic website, or even build an FTP server on top of IPFS. For a more complete list of endless possibilities, check out the announcement (opens new window).

March! Rising to the challenge 💪

Explore the anatomy of a CID in ProtoSchool’s latest tutorial
Also new, the snazzy icons and toggle which make it easy to find non-coding content on ProtoSchool, including the new multiple-choice Anatomy of a CID tutorial (opens new window).

Testground v.02 ships 🚢
Learn all about Testground's goal of providing a set of tools for testing next generation P2P applications (i.e. Filecoin, IPFS, libp2p & others), as well as their mission and roadmap (opens new window).

Qri shipped their biggest release ever!
qri-desktop 0.4.0 launches (opens new window) a whole slew of new features & many bugs squashed. You can now browse, search, & clone datasets all within the app!

The Unstoppable Extension goes live in the Chrome Browser
With their latest feature (opens new window), you can surf the dweb in two simple steps!

The effort to merge repos begins
The js-ipfs team began trialing a Lerna-style monorepo (opens new window) to alleviate the confusion over the volume of repos necessary to pull in. It’s going to take some time, but it will be worth it. 😅

IPFS Regions and Replications launched by Pinata
For users looking for more speed and extra redundancy, Pinata now allows you to replicate your content on multiple nodes and in multiple regions (opens new window). Making decentralization easier every day!

Rust IPFS arrives on the scene
Active full-time work on a Rust-IPFS implementation has commenced, building on the great work from rust-libp2p. Check out how you can contribute right here (opens new window)!

And the very next day, Wolfram Lang support!
Stephen Wolfram announces in Version 12.1 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica (opens new window) that support for external filesystems, specifically IPFS, was added.

Introducing the Ceramic Protocol
Due to its hybrid design relying on IPFS/IPLD (opens new window) and various blockchains, Ceramic’s document graph is interoperable, scalable, permissionless, and low cost and we’re very excited about it.

IPFS lands in Opera for Android
As we recently mentioned, IPFS landing, enabled by default, right out of the box (opens new window), in a production release of a major web browser was a big deal for us.

You can now host your Gatsby and Vue apps with IPFS
Thanks to the hard work on some crucial plugins, you can now host your Gatsby and Vue apps on IPFS (opens new window) easily with the path converter plugins.

Also new this quarter...

• The IPFS DevGrants beta (opens new window) was successfully launched, resulting in 5 paid out bounties, 5 more in progress, and 6 grant approvals, most of which are still in progress. Discover how you can get paid to help build IPFS. ⚒
• We spent some time in Q1 doing a deep dive on where people are talking about IPFS and how we can reach and serve them better. You can learn more here about the Information Ecosystem Audit and its findings, on our community repo (opens new window).
• playwright-test (opens new window) now allows you to run Mocha, zora, Tape and Benchmark.js scripts inside real browsers
• stardust in js-libp2p (opens new window) shipped!
• IPFS Desktop began supporting Mac OS X Catalina (opens new window).

Keep up the great work team! We can’t wait to see what happens in the next few months. 🎉

Check out the community 🌟 all stars 🌟 who joined us for the IPFS Weekly calls

Each Monday the IPFS Community gathers at 5pm UTC to share a new story about what people are doing with our favorite filesystem. In the past few months, we’ve had guests from Dapp Node, Infura, Robonomics, Qri, Fission, Fleek (formerly Terminal), Textile, Pinata, and others join us.

Next quarter we’ll have talks from Berty, EDGI, Unstoppable Domains, Anytype, Microsoft and more! Catch up on this past quarter’s community calls here (opens new window), and we’ll see you on Monday!

Great reads about IPFS from Q1 👇

• IPFS Emerges as Tool to Distribute Container Images (opens new window): “contributors added a new way to fetch blocks to the Bitswap protocol that cut transfer time in half for benchmarked use cases around container distribution. In the previous version of Bitswap, it took on average 9.08 seconds to pull a 300 MiB image to 32 leeching peers. The optimized branch brought this down to 3.16 seconds—20% faster than DockerHub (3.93 seconds).”
• Decentralized Website, How to host a personal website on IPFS (opens new window): “IPFS introduced an address scheme for content and also the exchange of information using peer to peer networking without a central server. People using the IPFS application automatically act as servers for other peers when they have information another node needs.”
• What’s IPFS and how it can change the Internet (opens new window): “IPFS is designed to fix HTTP problems and moves the internet towards the permanent web. A web that contents are stored permanently and no single entity controls or owns all of the data.”
• How to deploy a Censorship Resistant Website for FREE (opens new window): “I believe in free and open internet and to help keep it that we’re going to learn how to deploy a censorship-resistant static website in just a few minutes with a few free tools. To achieve censorship resistance we’re going to use IPFS (Interplanetary File System) a distributed system for storing and accessing files, websites, and data.”
• IPFS and Docker (opens new window): “With IPFS, you can share files without the need for a centralized product such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Co. That means that you need no account, you have no size or bandwidth limits…​It makes sharing files convenient and very secure.”

Videos to bookmark (for rewatching, of course)

Face it, you’ve got the time. Enjoy! 🍿

• How to use IPFS and how to store files (opens new window), via æternity Ekiti
• Bring Your Own Data: A New Model for an Interoperable dWeb (opens new window), via Carson Farmer
• The Path to Peer-to-Peer Matrix (opens new window), via Matthew Hodgson
• Document Exchange Verification System on Ethereum Blockchain using IPFS (opens new window), via Rumeel Hussain
• Making IPFS Work For You (opens new window), via Matt Ober

Coming up next in 2020

So what’s next for IPFS? Content Routing is still our major focus for 2020, if you recall from the roadmap (opens new window), and we’re very motivated by the progress our team, as well as our contributor community, has made over the past few months.

Much bigger things are right around the corner, but more about that later. We’ve also invested quite heavily in the IPFS ecosystem, having created these working groups:

• Browsers & Connectivity: Maximize availability & connectivity of IPFS on the web
• Collabs & Community: Support IPFS users and grow new opportunities through research, collaborations and community engagement
• Developer Experience & Maintainership: Support the IPFS technical community through documentation, contributor experience, API ergonomics and tooling

The evidence of these groups’ progress is listed above, with much more in store this quarter. 😎

If you’d like to get involved, check out our contribution guidelines (opens new window) and come to IPFS Office Hours (opens new window) to get pointers on where to start!

Please take care of yourselves and each other. ❤️

Get involved with IPFS by checking us out on GitHub (opens new window), joining discussions on our community forum (opens new window), or hitting us up in chat (opens new window). Have a suggestion? Email us.

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