Filecoin Announces First Mission to Deploy Decentralized File System in Space | Hacker News Reader

Filecoin Announces First Mission to Deploy Decentralized File System in Space

fil.org

13 pointscapableweb14 comments

I’m loathe to even ask (I can’t think of a more accursed combination than Lockheed Martin and cryptocurrency), but: why do you need to shoot a computer into space to measure latency? Can’t you just introduce latency?

Stating the obvious here: it's a publicity stunt.

IPFS is crypto-adjacent but not a crypto thing itself though, right?

The core idea - a content-addressable globally distributed cache - seems sound to me. And I don't believe the core IPFS protocol has any blockchains baked into it.

Filecoin is a token thing which builds on top of IPFS, but my understanding is that IPFS can exist and work entirely independently of Filecoin.

Or am I misunderstanding IPFS here?

That’s pretty spot on.

I can understand the value of a globally distributed content-addressable store! But the page in question leads with Filecoin, is on the Filecoin Foundation’s own site, and still doesn’t address my question (which, again, is why it has to be in space to introduce latency).

Nope, there's no blockchain anywhere in IPFS. There is a distributed hash table (Kademlia protocol), a peer-to-peer library (libp2p.io), and a bunch of clients and gateways. Crypto-adjacent is fair but IPFS has a lot of other applications that need block hosting and distribution in general.

Talk about a company with too much capital

Protocol labs has continually turned out solid work. Nothing wrong with a publicity stunt to get filecoin some attention.

Seems like an impractical waste. Just some engineers and VCs wanting to do something sexy.

I want to install IPFS desktop but I am afraid it will wear down my drives, will it?

Is this even useful on earth yet?

Yes, ipfs is surprisingly solid. Give it a go!

what do you use it for in real life?

I worked with it extensively on a for my last position capturing electrical metering data and derivative computations in a fault tolerant distributed system. It’s really great for something with lots of small nodes with intermittent connectivity.

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