Brave now has built-in support for the IPFS distributed network

A few days ago the developers of the popular Brave web browser unveiled through an advertisement the integration of support for the decentralized file system InterPlanetary File System (or better known by its acronym as IPFS), which forms a file storage with global versions, which works in the form of a P2P network formed from member systems.

With that Brave users can now access IPFS resources directly using the ipfs: // and ipns: // schemes. The new feature is available in Brave desktop version 1.19.

About IPFS support in Brave

It is mentioned that when detecting an attempt to access an IPFS address or detect a link to an HTTP to IPFS gateway, the browser will ask the user to start their own IPFS node or use the gateway to access IPFS over HTTP.

The default gateway is dweb.link, maintained by Protocol Labs, which oversees IPFS development. When you choose to install your own local node, the go-ipfs package will be loaded in the system, for which subsequent maintenance is used the same mechanism that is used to update plugins.

To control access to IPFS in Brave, the service page brave: // ipfs is implemented, as well as a special button in the menu (My node). Optionally, user can install IPFS Companion plugin to manage the local IPFS host.

Besides that to ensure confidentiality, IPFS processing is disabled in private mode and when working through Tor. The local IPFS host cache is limited to 1GB, and when the cache is 90% full, the garbage collector starts working every hour.

In its current form, IPFS support in the browser implements the functionality to support the IPFS node, but not all plans have been implemented yet and In the future, built-in support for IPFS web applications is expected, Filecoin experiments, publishing capabilities, shared storage, revision control and content sharing via IPFS, IPFS integration in Android version, pinning content to a local node, visual highlighting of IPFS work on the bar of addresses, the ability to use Tor as a transport for IPFS.

IPFS helps solve problems such as storage reliability (if the original storage is disabled, the file can be downloaded from other users' systems), resist content censorship (to block, you will need to block all user systems where there is a copy of the data), and organization access in the absence of Internet connection or if the quality of the communication channel is poor (you can download data through the closest participants in the local network).

In addition to storing files and exchanging data, IPFS can be used as a basis for creating new servicesFor example, to organize work for sites that are not linked to servers or to create distributed applications.

The decentralized file system IPFS stands out for its content targeting, instead of by location and arbitrary names; In IPFS, the link to access a file is directly related to its content and includes a cryptographic hash of the content.

The file address cannot be arbitrarily changed, it can only be changed after changing the content. Similarly, it is impossible to make a change to the file without changing the address (the old version will stay at the same address and the new one will be available through a different address, as it will change the hash of the file's content).

Taking into account that the file identifier changes with each change, so as not to transfer new links each time, services are provided to link permanent addresses that take into account different versions of the file (IPNS), or anchor an alias by analogy with FS and DNS traditional (MFS (Mutable File System) and DNSLink).

Source: https://brave.com/


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