What is IPFS?
- Author
- CRYPTO PORT Editorial
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 4 min
In short
IPFS is a distributed file system that addresses content by its hash rather than by location. It is widely used to host NFT images and metadata. It does not, however, guarantee permanence: unless someone keeps the file pinned, it can become unretrievable.
Key points
- Files are addressed by a content hash called a CID
- Change one byte and the CID changes too
- The protocol itself guarantees no permanence
- Pinning services usually do the actual hosting
Definition
Short for InterPlanetary File System: a peer-to-peer protocol where files are requested by a CID derived from their contents rather than by server address.
The ordinary web addresses files by server location. IPFS addresses them by a hash of the contents, so anything you retrieve under a given CID is byte-for-byte the same file. That is the appeal for NFT metadata: nobody can quietly substitute different content.
But a CID only means 'retrievable if some node still holds it'. If nobody does, the fetch fails. In practice teams pay a pinning service to keep the data, and when that arrangement lapses the file becomes unavailable — much like ordinary hosting.
Browsers usually cannot handle ipfs:// directly, so marketplaces fetch through an HTTP gateway. When a gateway is down and the image will not load, the data itself may still be reachable through a different gateway.
Watch out for
- · Putting a file on IPFS does not make it permanent
- · Viewing through a gateway is a dependency on one operator, and it can stop
- · Metadata that records a gateway HTTP URL instead of the CID breaks when that operator goes away