The Brave web browser developers announced about integrations support for a decentralized file system IPFS (InterPlanetary File System), which forms a global versioned file storage, deployed in P2P form a network formed from member systems. Brave users can now can access IPFS resources directly using ipfs: // schemes and ipns: //. The new feature is available in Brave for the desktop (Linux, macOS, and Windows) starting with release 1.19.
When detecting an attempt to access an IPFS address or detecting a link to an HTTP gateway to IPFS, the browser will prompt 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. If you choose to install your own local node, the go-ipfs package will be downloaded to the system, for the subsequent maintenance of which the same mechanism is used that is used to update the add-ons.
To control access to IPFS, Brave has implemented a brave: // ipfs service page, as well as a special button in the (My Node) menu. Optionally, the user can install the add-on IPFS Companion to manage the local IPFS host. To ensure confidentiality, IPFS processing is disabled in private mode and when working through Tor.
The IPFS local host cache is limited to 1 GB, when the cache is 90% full, the garbage collector starts running every hour.
In its current form, IPFS support in the browser implements the functionality to support the IPFS node, but not all plans are yet implemented and in the future, built-in support for IPFS web applications, experiments with Filecoin, capabilities for publishing, shared storage, revision control and sharing content via IPFS, integrating IPFS into the Android version, pinning content to a local node, visually highlighting the work with IPFS in the address bar, the ability to use Tor as a transport for IPFS.
IPFS helps to solve such problems as storage reliability (if the original storage is disabled, the file can be downloaded from other users’ systems), opposition to censoring of content (to block all user systems that have a copy of the data must be blocked) and access in the absence of a direct connection to the Internet or with poor quality of the communication channel (you can download the data through the nearest participants in the local network). In addition to storing files and exchanging data, IPFS can be used as a basis for creating new services, for example, for organizing the work of sites that are not tied to servers, or for creating distributed applications .