The decentralized WeTransfer
github.com
github.com
The user experience here, is essentially the same as WeTransfer. The only difference is the underlying technologies.
Now, one would have to either blindly trust that the infrastructure is truly decentralized, or have the time and necessary skills to audit the code.
And then they'd have to trust that web server is actually hooking up to the code that was just audited!
What this means is, "decentralized" projects still require a level of trust, even on the behalf of people who understand what decentralization means.
Next is the problem of the "masses". They already are using WeTransfer, or Dropbox for that matter. Why should they switch to this? Because it's decentralized? Now you have to explain to them what that means and why that's beneficial to them, and if you're successful there, they still have to: trust the code (and they only can do that by understanding it) and trust that you're actually deploying that code on your live interface.
Thus, the decentralization community has got a marketing problem. Fortunately for Bitcoin they've got and continue to have massive amounts of free press, press which does not even actually highlight the decentralized aspect of Bitcoin, just the price action. There is no press movement to help catapult "decentralized infrastructure."
I'm just saying, decentralized projects currently only seem to appeal to people who are interested in decentralization. There needs to be a way to move pass this hurdle if there's going to be the much sought after "mass adoption."
The average person doesn't care how something works, they just care that it does work. And plenty solutions already work for them.
I just hope in the end, we aren't just tinkering for the sake of tinkering.
I don't think we are. IPFS is one of the few projects that gives me hope that within 10 years the internet won't be completely carved-up and censored by the big tech companies and governments.
I believe decentralised systems serve a purpose (especially in fintech), but I'm not sure this solves an actual a problem (marketing it will be 10,000 harder than building it).
Also, as a business open sourcing stuff hardly ever makes sense. Not sure what your goal was with this (cool tech though!) but if it was to set up a business, I don't think that was a great decision.
a more interesting angle, imo, is to create an alternative to the GOOG/APPL/MSFT mobile/desktop platforms using free software and dex tech. a lot of the stuff will be the same, people want music, photos, video, social, but I also hope that the p2p architecture will inspire a lot of novel ideas that will only be available inside of our freedom garden.
#heropunch:matrix.org
Yes, and it's because security is a feature, not a solution.
99% of people (think your Mother, or your non-techie buddy back home) - do not care that much about these things. 'The feature' they care about is 'sharing'. They can already get that robustly via regular services.
So maybe 'it's nice' to have some degree of extra privacy', but not if they actually have to do something, think about it, install something - yada yada.
For a select few, privacy/security is in and of itself a feature, and might be a primary motivation for use/purchase, but it's a small group.
Example: intellectually, I care about the issue, but really, I could care less that Instagram has 3 of my photos, or that FB has a very small number of posts that I've made.
I believe the 'decentralization' movement will happen when:
A) On the consumer side it's easy, obvious, there is a push - and possibly when adoption isn't necessarily driven by the decentralized nature, rather, something else, a 'benefit' that is derived
B) Enterprise. They will definitely not want their data out in the world willy nilly. Think of how much critical data Salesforce has for example. After a few more leaks, it could be that CIO's everywhere demand more 'on premise' and this could be an opening for more decentralized services.
However, my understanding is that IPFS will publish the file hash to adjacent notes, so unless they are encrypted people can listen for your provider records and look at your (presumably privately shared) files: https://discuss.ipfs.io/t/is-it-possible-to-store-private-ob...
- Where is my file hosted when I receive it?
- Has your server pinned and seeding that file?
- Is there a distributed set of nodes that also host it?
Doesn't that apply to torrents, too? If 2 or more people don't own (and share) the exact same content, then of course it's not decentralized.
I agree, this seems to sort of bypass IPFS on the download side because my mom doesn’t have to have a node running to download the picture I send her.
However, one potential benefit of this service could be to act as a foot-in-the-door to gain a user base ... I could imagine a .dmg /.exe in the future setting up an IPFS node for your average non-techie user. Still, that doesn’t solve the problem of competing with existing & simple centralized solutions with similar features, as noted in other comments.
Glad to see people building projects with IPFS. Nice work.
My guess is that the server of this project uploads and "pins" this file in IPFS, in which case it would be no different than a centralised solution. If the server goes down, your file is unaccessible.
Also, when you use this app, you aren't doing this through an IPFS node to then be able to seed it. You are just downloading the already hosted file using a HTTP proxy service that can download from IPFS.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Any user can "seed" any IPFS file they want, they don't need anything from this service.
> in which case it would be no different than a centralised solution
A distributed solution with N=1 isn't the same as a centralized solution. The difference is that distributed solutions can easily increase N, but centralized solutions can't. In this case, you can distribute the file from as many nodes as you control, which makes this service much better than a centralized solution.
> Also, when you use this app, you aren't doing this through an IPFS node to then be able to seed it
Sure, but you can use something like www.eternum.io (or just run your own IPFS node) to fix that. If you don't want to do either, of course you won't have any of the advantages. It's like saying "cars aren't better than couches, they aren't much more comfortable and they don't run if you don't start the engine".
It's in the core functionality of IPFS to be able to host a file and the http proxy is available by default by IPFS. So the real problems are distributing and decentralising the file (such as by running an IPFS node) and this project is not making the slightest attempt at that. Without that there is little point in using this service as it is just like any other centralised hosting service, just so happens that the file is on IPFS.
Also, is not like torrents, if disconnect your node, the file disappears!! Read IPFS docs please
How is it not like torrents? If you're the only seeder and you turn off seeding, does the file not disappear?
> Read IPFS docs please
You're the one who should read them, if you think IPFS is not like torrents.
Otherwise, great link; nice looking project.
"In IPFS, data distribution happens by exchanging blocks with peers using a BitTorrent inspired protocol"
[1] https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs/tree/master/papers/ipfs-cap2pfs