[HN Gopher] Subdomains for IPFS
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       Subdomains for IPFS
        
       Author : dumitruflorin
       Score  : 101 points
       Date   : 2021-06-28 10:59 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ipds.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ipds.io)
        
       | AndyMcConachie wrote:
       | How can one have sub-domains for IPFS?
       | 
       | I thought IPFS URIs were like:
       | 
       | ipfs://{HASH}
       | 
       | But this site has them as:
       | 
       | https://ipfs.io/ipfs/{HASH}
       | 
       | I'm confused.
        
         | Iridescent_ wrote:
         | That is because you can't access IPFS in a regular browser
         | anyways so it is likely a Gateway which fetches IPFS pages for
         | you.
        
           | nybble41 wrote:
           | That is correct. If you have the IPFS Companion[0] browser
           | extension installed then it can automatically recognize URLs
           | of this form and rewrite them to use your local IPFS node
           | instead of the public ipfs.io gateway. The advantage of using
           | https://ipfs.io/ipfs/... in your links instead of ipfs://...
           | is that the former still works even if the visitor doesn't
           | have the extension installed.
           | 
           | [0] https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-companion
        
       | mushysteven wrote:
       | No about, no technical info on how it works, the only contact is
       | through telegram. It seems something related or even made by the
       | IPFS team, but it's not.
       | 
       | "We are hiring a solidity developer": how is this related to
       | IPDS?
       | 
       | TL;DR: The website does everything possible to look like scam.
        
         | viraptor wrote:
         | > "We are hiring a solidity developer": how is this related to
         | IPDS?
         | 
         | Likely they're planning to charge for the service.
         | (speculation)
        
         | hanniabu wrote:
         | It will likely be built using Ethereum for registration and
         | verification, basically what ENS is doing.
        
       | throwawaygal7 wrote:
       | I'm always happy to see projects trying to make a decentralized
       | future.
       | 
       | I'm always sad to see the critical , pedantical side of HN's
       | userbase point out that few ecosystems are completely
       | decentralized and then claim that ruins the whole enterprise.
       | 
       | Similarly, when someone wants to run free opensource OS people
       | will criticize them for relying on closed source hardware or
       | closed source communication networks.
       | 
       | Can we not let perfect be the enemy of better?
        
       | adkadskhj wrote:
       | How's the race between IPFS and Dat Protocol these days? I keep
       | waiting for one of them to pull ahead and solidify themselves.
       | 
       | Not that popularity matters exactly, but I used to be super hyped
       | for IPFS but my fervor stalled when it *felt* like the team got
       | super distracted by FileCoin and IPO. Combine that with technical
       | hurdles like the time it takes to spread IPNS updates and i
       | started to pull back.
       | 
       | These days i'm wondering if a less grandiose toolset like
       | Hypercore might solve a lot of similar problems with better
       | usability and short term traction.
       | 
       | Interesting nonetheless.
       | 
       |  _edit1_ : Been googling this question to answer it myself, and i
       | now realize Dat _is_ Hypercore .. i think. Ah name churn. Lol.
        
         | pfraze wrote:
         | I'm still consistently impressed with the work Maf and Andrew
         | are doing on Hypercore. The next major release will include
         | multiwriter and has some nice networking-layer improvements,
         | and I really like how they've implemented the updates. Don't
         | know the timeline for release but it'll be this year.
         | 
         | Both are good tech, both are still in dev, so whichever floats
         | your boat
        
         | fwip wrote:
         | Yep, there's been some name-churn. Dat the name is no longer
         | used, and all the tech that was powering it is now under
         | https://hypercore-protocol.org/
         | 
         | From an architectural level, IPFS is more focused on the "one
         | unified namespace for everything" application. IPFS is designed
         | to transparently share blocks of files no matter what
         | namespace/key that block lives under. For example, many
         | projects have the MIT License in their source directory, so
         | when retrieving that file, any node that has pinned a project
         | containing that file can help seed you. This is handy from a
         | sharing point of view, but also potentially difficult from a
         | privacy issue.
         | 
         | The hypercore ecosystem is more focused on private / invite-
         | only workspaces. Peers only exchange data with other peers in
         | the same hyperswarm address.
         | 
         | Another difference in focus is mutability - Hypercores are
         | designed to be updateable by exactly one person (an append-only
         | log), and IPFS is designed to be updated by zero people (an
         | immutable tree).
         | 
         | I haven't worked much with IPFS, but Hyper* makes it easy to
         | mix and match only the modules you need for your application.
         | There is some cool software and demos out there that use only
         | hypercore and hyperswarm modules, and bypass the Hyperdrive
         | file-tree representation entirely.
        
       | powerapple wrote:
       | One question regarding ipfs, does every node maintain a lookup
       | table from hash to address?
        
         | omginternets wrote:
         | I'm not 100% sure what you mean, but hopefully my answer is
         | still helpful. Content routing is performed by a DHT, so nodes
         | do indeed maintain a lookup table [0] from hash to "provider" (
         | _i.e._ an address) but a given node does not store all such
         | mappings, only a subset.
         | 
         | [0] It is possible to run a node in DHT "client mode", in which
         | case it stores no mappings and relies on peers to resolve
         | content ids.
         | 
         | Does this answer the question at the level you were hoping for?
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | nextaccountic wrote:
       | So this is a domain name for dapps, but the domain name itself
       | isn't decentralized?
       | 
       | How much does it cost?
        
       | whybotherwith wrote:
       | Please, someone help me understand. Why would I want this instead
       | of ENS or a traditional domain?
       | 
       | Let's assume that we are interested in decentralization for the
       | sake of censorship-resistance and lets imagine I want to run a
       | website to allow people to share "extreme" political opinions
       | that might not otherwise be normally tolerated on the clearnet
       | web. I set it up with IPFS, and then I register:
       | 
       | 1. a traditional domain name
       | 
       | 2. ENS (Ethereum Name Service) domain
       | 
       | 3. a Tor Onion Hidden v3 Service
       | 
       | 4. IPDS "IPFS Subdomain"
       | 
       | After attracting attention of the FBI, the traditional domain
       | gets redirected to an FBI seizure page, presumably.
       | 
       | The ENS domain is governed by a contract that would require a
       | manual M-of-N override of the ENS contract. (I'd love to see a
       | threat analysis of ENS from this angle). I've never heard of this
       | happening and it seems like it would be a very notable event.
       | 
       | The hidden service is, short of attacks on Tor, quite resistant
       | (though usability is quite poor).
       | 
       | And then finally, this submission, IPDS -- I'm not sure I believe
       | that they will be any better than a traditional domain (given the
       | warning at the bottom, and on the interest form).
       | 
       | Can someone help me understand? EDIT: The more I look at this,
       | the more I'm struck by just another sign of how immature the IPFS
       | ecosystem is. Seemingly destined to NIH every last thing. How can
       | you put this landing page up without any other details or
       | acknowledgement of alternatives and expect buy-in?
       | 
       | EDIT2: of course they're collaborating in a cleartext Telegram
       | room. People, get your stuff together, open source collaboration
       | belongs on Matrix. Not Discord. Not Telegram. Period.
        
       | janus24 wrote:
       | Building a product to help decentralize but using Google Form to
       | registrer, no logic here.
        
         | orf wrote:
         | No logic to this comment either.
        
         | fwip wrote:
         | It's centralized domain-name registration, so there's no point
         | to using decentralized tech to manage registration.
        
         | cartoonworld wrote:
         | Well, dredging up useless facts from the old cobweb attic, back
         | in the 80's if you wanted to have a domain name you had to give
         | Jon Postel a ring[0] and ask politely for him to manually edit
         | the zone.
         | 
         | I suppose you gotta start somewhere, "worse is better" MVP and
         | so on.
         | 
         | [0] - http://www.cybertelecom.org/dns/history.htm
        
           | jaywalk wrote:
           | I'd argue that the difference here is that we do have the
           | technology to collect data these days, and relying on Google
           | Forms is simply laziness.
        
             | cartoonworld wrote:
             | >relying on Google Forms is simply laziness.
             | 
             | Oh, of course it is!
             | 
             | Much better than email, telephone, or possibly IRC, as you
             | can use Zapier or IFTT to semi-automate the preformatted
             | requests.
             | 
             | Classic MVP; probably whipped up on a coffee break. Nice
             | one, IPFS
        
       | bmacd wrote:
       | Is there an advantage to this over using the Ethereum Name
       | Service (ENS)?
        
       | sunbum wrote:
       | How is this different from DNSLink[1]
       | 
       | [1] - https://docs.ipfs.io/concepts/dnslink/
        
         | carry_bit wrote:
         | It probably just is DNSLink, only instead of you going out and
         | buying your own domain name and setting the record, they create
         | a subdomain and set the record for you.
        
       | dumitruflorin wrote:
       | Domain Name System for IPFS. You can get a subdomain for your
       | Dapp IPFS is one of the coolest things out there, but as much as
       | we like it we still need a human-readable name for the URLs as a
       | Source of Trust, this is why we have built IPDS.io
        
         | Aqueous wrote:
         | this defeats the point of IPfs. create a distributed naming or
         | hosting system or bust.
        
           | Avamander wrote:
           | If you find a bypass to Zooko's triangle, let everyone know
           | or bust with the criticism.
        
             | chrisweekly wrote:
             | I had to look it up:
             | 
             | > "Zooko's triangle defines the three desirable traits of a
             | network protocol identifier as Human-meaningful,
             | Decentralized and Secure."
        
         | georgyo wrote:
         | I don't fully understand. You are just going to be a setting
         | dnslink records, and possibly an IPFS gateway.
         | 
         | There are hundreds of free dns providers and public gateways.
         | What makes your service interesting besides marketing directly
         | to that community?
        
           | pessimizer wrote:
           | Is marketing directly to that community and guaranteeing it
           | works for that community not useful?
        
       | Grustaf wrote:
       | Is anyone actually using IPFS? Can't find any statistics.
        
         | leshokunin wrote:
         | It is used heavily in NFTs. You need content addressing for
         | that use case.
        
         | Evil__Maid wrote:
         | I've been working on this website to help make resources
         | available to stay safe on the Dweb. evilmaid.crypto
        
         | 7373737373 wrote:
         | The Internet Archive seems to be testing it:
         | https://dweb.archive.org, and maybe other archival projects:
         | https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmZBuTfLH1LLi4JqgutzBdwSYS5ybrkztnyWAfR...
        
           | Avamander wrote:
           | If I'm being totally honest, I'll believe IPFS is worth
           | something when I see a website open seamlessly and feature-
           | equivalent to the real one. A distributed archive.org, but
           | not a static totally nerfed version of it for example.
        
         | gccs wrote:
         | LibGen uses it and if works way better than what they had
         | before.
        
         | shubb wrote:
         | I saw a pirate site trying to use it as a DMCA resistant CDN
         | for movies. It was a disaster.
         | 
         | Their idea, I think, was that if their site got taken down,
         | they could easily pop back up at another address so long as the
         | big heavy movies were safe and they just needed to make a copy
         | of the HTML site.
         | 
         | So long as the movies were pinned by more than one IPFS server,
         | they would remain available at their IPFS hash, even if one
         | server was subject to a takedown.
         | 
         | The site could then link to the hashes via a public gateway and
         | use an embedded player to play the movies all in simple static
         | html. Very light to copy around.
         | 
         | 1. It turns out that the public gateways were not actually
         | willing to handle that amount of traffic for free. Over a few
         | months they got blocked by all the good gateways. They could
         | have set up their own gateway at this point but the following
         | happened so the project died for other reasons.
         | 
         | 2. I think the admin was hoping people would pin (seed) the
         | popular files on IPFS and share the server load. This never
         | ended up happening, so in the end there was just one server
         | 'hiding behind' IPFS, burning through bandwidth. It ran out of
         | bandwidth and the (college kid?) trying to run it ran out of
         | money.
         | 
         | 3. IPFS isn't designed for anonymity. When they got enough
         | traction, they got a letter and shut down.
         | 
         | This is why ipfs probably isn't the right platform for libgen
         | really.
        
         | twox2 wrote:
         | Yes, it's used heavily in many Ethereum (or other crypto)
         | dAPPs.
        
           | Grustaf wrote:
           | Ok, but are any of those actually used?
        
             | twox2 wrote:
             | Yes. Millions of dollars worth of ETH are transacted
             | through NFT platforms every day. Whether you personally
             | consider that useful is up to you, but people are using it.
        
               | Grustaf wrote:
               | I know people trade NFTs, I didn't realise that counted
               | as dApps though. Are any other, more sophisticated dApps
               | in use?
        
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       (page generated 2021-06-28 23:01 UTC)