39 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
39 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
An evaluation of the IPFS paper
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2021-01-07 Dagger Team
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https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmR7GSQM93Cx5eAg6a6yRzNde1FQv7uL6X1o4k7zrJa3LX/ipfs.draft3.pdf
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Goal of this evaluation is to find things to adopt or avoid while designing
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Dagger. It is not meant to be a criticism of IPFS.
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#### Pros:
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+ IPFS is designed by simplifying, evolving, and connecting proven techniques
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(§3)
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+ Consists of a stack of separately described sub-protocols (§3)
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+ Uses Coral DSHT to favor data that is nearby, reducing latency of lookup
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(§2.1.2)
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+ Uses proof-of-work in S/Kademlia to discourage Sybil attacks (§2.1.3)
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+ Favors self-describing values such as multihash (§3.1) and multiaddr (§3.2.1)
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+ BitSwap protocol for exchanging blocks supports multiple strategies (§3.4.2),
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so it should be relatively easy to add a micropayment strategy.
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+ Uses content addressing (§3.5)
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+ The Merkle DAG is simple, yet allows constucting filesystems,
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key-value stores, databases, messaging system, etc.. (§3.5)
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#### Cons:
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- Kademlia prefers long-lived nodes (§2.1.1), which is not ideal for mobile
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enviroments (although it's unclear whether there are any better alternatives)
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- The default BitSwap strategy falls just short of introducing a currency with
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micro payments, necessitating additional work for nodes to find blocks to
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barter with (§3.4)
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- Object pinning (§3.5.3) inevitably leads to centralized gateways to IPFS, such
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as Infura and Pinata
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- IPFS uses variable size blocks instead of fixed-size chunks (§3.6), which
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might make it a bit harder to add incentives and pricing
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- Supporting version control directly in IPFS feels like an unnecessary
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complication (§3.6.5)
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