Introduction

offchain::ipfs is Substrate, infused with IPFS.

Substrate is a blockchain framework built in Rust, with off-chain worker capabilities.
IPFS is a distributed file storage network, connecting peers and their content.

By including the Rust implementation IPFS in the native Substrate runtime, and by allowing pass-through wasm calls via Substrate's Off-chain Workers, we enable a powerful and familiar subset of the IPFS APIs, including:

• ipfs add - Write data to IPFS
• ipfs cat - Read data from IPFS
• ipfs dht findpeer - Discover peers
• ipfs dht findprovs - Discover content
• ipfs swarm connect / disconnect - Swarm with other IPFS peers
• ipfs pin add / rm - Pin and unpin content

offchain::ipfs allows you to account for your data transactions and DHT status in the blockchain. These on-chain insights can serve as a foundation for incentivized data storage and replication. This means no separate executable: both blockchain and distributed storage are together in one.

The offchain::ipfs Manual is the documentation of our efforts, as well as useful explanations and code examples to get you started using this technology. Due to offchain::ipfs being a well-maintained fork of paritytech/substrate, this manual also stands in as typical documentation, such as docs.rs and README.md files.

This manual is presented by: @koivunej, @ljedrz, @whalelephant, and @aphelionz

Disclaimers

You should still consider this an alpha preview.

The primary value of this work is the embedded IPFS node itself. The pallet included in the node-template binary is only meant as a showcase, and is just one of many possible realizations of offchain::ipfs.