In recent years, with the operation of IPFS, programmers from all over the world have begun to flock to this magical open-source world, continuously innovating applications in various fields by combining the advantages of IPFS, opening up infinite imagination for the new era of the internet. Below, I will introduce applications based on IPFS.
IPFS Music Player
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Ujomusic, a blockchain marketplace for musicians on IPFS, comparable to Xiami and Migu Music.
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DIFFUSE, an online music player.
IPFS music player website: https://diffuse.sh/
- Spotify, dedicated to sharing millions of songs.
Spotify (https://www.spotify.com/us/) has the slogan: Music for everyone, dedicated to sharing millions of songs. With Spotify, we can easily find suitable music anytime on devices like phones, computers, and tablets, and we can also browse music collections from friends, artists, and celebrities, or create a radio station. Spotify stores content on the IPFS network, significantly reducing the storage cost of audio data.
IPFS Video Player
- dTube, a video site comparable to YouTube.
D.Tube is the first encrypted distributed video platform built on the STEEM blockchain and the IPFS peer-to-peer network, which will support the Filecoin network in the future. It aims to be an alternative to YouTube, allowing users to watch or upload videos based on IPFS/Filecoin and share or comment on the immutable STEEM blockchain.
- IPFS video player, the first IPFS application in China.
This is hailed as the first IPFS application in China, allowing us to search for movies directly using the hash value of the movie:
Online player website: http://www.ipfs.guide
IPFS Social Network Applications
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Orbit, the alternative to QQ on IPFS.
Orbit is a fully distributed, peer-to-peer, real-time chat application based on IPFS, which can be seen as a decentralized Slack or IRC. Orbit uses IPFS and CRDTs to store and process real-time communications: it can operate without any central point, completely peer-to-peer. Orbit registers identities and tracks users and identity information through Ethereum and uPort. This showcases a powerful combination of IPFS distributed applications and Ethereum processing systems. -
Akasha, comparable to social tools like Facebook and WeChat.
Akasha (https://akasha.world/) is a next-generation social media network supported by Ethereum and IPFS, first presented to the public on World Press Freedom Day, May 3, 2016, with the Alpha version now open for registration. Akasha (आकाश, pronounced [aːkaːʃə]) translates to "ether" in Chinese. In Sanskrit civilization, Akasha is envisioned as a metaphysical information network connecting humanity with itself and infinite knowledge. In this network, thoughts, feelings, and experiences are permanently stored and shared. Akasha places storage on IPFS, effectively protecting the security and immutability of files. Akasha is a distributed social media network dedicated to restoring freedom of speech and privacy to the public. Decentralized blockchain is the future trend, and applications represented by Akasha rely on the IPFS protocol, stimulating collective intelligence and potentially bringing hope for information freedom to the world economy through economic incentives! -
Textile, dedicated to replacing Instagram.
Textile has five features: resisting censorship, open-source, fully encrypted, free provision, and no ad tracking. -
Resisting censorship: Textile is built on distributed storage and sharing protocols, helping to prevent any form of censorship.
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Open-source: The code has been public from the beginning, and every user can log into GitHub at any time to create their own Textile distribution.
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Fully encrypted: Users' photos and information can be encrypted directly on their devices, allowing users complete control over privacy and sharing.
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Free provision: Textile can be downloaded from Apple's App Store and Google Play, and an Android APK has also been released for everyone to download and install.
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No ad tracking: Textile has no ads, so there is no need to collect or monetize any user's data, truly returning data to applications built using the Textile toolkit, which can achieve user storage and retrieval of data through IPFS, helping applications utilize P2P communication to improve speed and bandwidth performance, and using peer-to-peer encryption technology. The use of datasets is only by authorized users and known encryption keys stored together in the user's private data wallet. Through IPFS remote hosting, local SDKs for transmission, and identity customization tools, Textile supports content creation from photos to writing assistance tools to healthcare applications.
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Magic Leap, the implementation of VR and AR on IPFS.
Magic Leap One uniquely combines natural light waves with soft layered synthetic light fields. Both the real world and virtual light emit neural signals, transmitted from the retina to the visual part of the human brain, creating an incredibly believable experience. Four years ago, a 3D naked-eye video from Magic Leap caused a global sensation. In the video, a group of people sat in an auditorium as a whale leaped from the floor, splashing huge waves, then crashed down, instantly transforming the entire auditorium into an ocean, leaving the audience in awe and applause. Magic Leap One is essentially a spatial computer that allows you to view and interact with digital content in the surrounding world, and it is also a lightweight, wearable device that seamlessly integrates the digital world into the physical world. The realization of the Magic Leap world will generate vast and precious data continuously. In a previous media interview, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz stated that Lifestream is: "the user's own data, the data of the world around them, and how to protect that data..." It is precisely because IPFS has four major advantages: fast download speed, optimized global storage, secure storage, and sustainable data preservation. Magic Leap can leverage IPFS to develop online communities, and combined with the upcoming Filecoin technology, a complete ecosystem can be presented to the public. -
Neocities, a social network for creating personal web pages for free and open-source.
Neocities (https://neocities.org/) is a social network for creating personal web pages for free and open-source, with cute icons that inspire creativity. It also provides free static website hosting and development tools. Neocities operates its own caching CDN in 11 data centers worldwide and enforces SSL on all sites 100%. Currently, they are interested in placing storage on the IPFS network, ensuring fast loading for both personal homepages and busy professional websites.
IPFS File Storage and Sharing Applications
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Peergos, comparable to Baidu Cloud.
The features of IPFS include: permanence, decentralized storage and sharing of files; P2P data storage; traceable file modification history; content addressability, etc. These features are important components of Peergos, which uses IPFS to store and share encrypted content. Peergos is a project built on IPFS that provides encryption and access control, with expectations: -
To ensure data privacy and security in a decentralized network, without generating any source data during transmission;
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To be independent of any centralized trust architecture, such as TLS, CA, etc., or domain name systems;
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When sharing files in the network, source data cannot be viewed;
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To automatically download binary files or clone code to form a machine and complete instant social communication, maximizing the protection of personal privacy.
Peergos has four advantages: -
Secure login;
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Strong encryption;
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Ability to hide source data; if only using storage functions, Peergos can hide the source data of files, such as file size, directory structure, etc. Due to the decentralized nature of IPFS, Peergos also lacks DNS (domain name system), centralized authorities, or single points of attack;
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No centralized secure transport layer protocol.
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PartyShare, IPFS file sharing.
PartyShare is an open-source file-sharing application built on the peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol IPFS, allowing users to share files using IPFS. Users simply drag the desired file into the PartyShare folder, and the system will hash it and assign an address, allowing others to request the file using the address provided by the user. The usage is very simple; just drag and drop to achieve file linking, so cool!
IPFS Map Applications
- Peer Map, a map application on IPFS.
Although this map application is still relatively weak, it demonstrates the potential in another field.
IPFS E-commerce
- OpenBazaar, comparable to Taobao and Amazon, a decentralized global free trading market.
OpenBazaar is a decentralized marketplace that combines features of eBay and BitTorrent. This platform has no central server; each user must download software to shop on the OpenBazaar platform, acting as a server node to serve the entire network. It forms a decentralized global free trading market. Many users who have used Taobao or Tmall absolutely trust Alibaba Group's third-party arbitration guarantee, but unlike that, OpenBazaar uses cryptography for guarantees, where trust comes from code and mathematics, not people, meaning there are no fees, and your profile is not required, and your transactions will not be censored. Currently, this software is used in over 30 countries, allowing purchases of music, games, food, beverages, clothing, art, jewelry, etc., from various countries. OpenBazaar leverages the powerful capabilities of IPFS to create a completely free e-commerce platform! Here, BTC, ETC, LTC, ZEC, and Dash can all be used as payment currencies. OB is somewhat like a small shop; when offline, the store becomes gray, which is quite cute. Currently, there is only a desktop version, and downloading requires an adapted environment.
Main features:
- Product category management is entirely market-edited.
- Order management system.
- Ricardian-style contracts.
- Multi-signature, third-party payment-based transactions.
- Arbitrator management and market.
- Private information.
- Identity authentication and credit system.
In the previous version 1.0, OpenBazaar was referred to as the "black market" and did not use IPFS, utilizing ZeroMQ to achieve P2P transactions, which to some extent bypassed centralized checks, distributing transaction fees as dividends to users. It also made headlines by using Bitcoin as a payment channel, rapidly increasing the number of users in a short time. Now, with the release of version 2.0, considering legal factors, the official has added a layer of review mechanisms, supporting digital currencies like BCH in addition to Bitcoin, and integrating and reconstructing IPFS, replacing the previous ZeroMQ. Now, many stores in the marketplace can operate on the host without users being online. Previously, transactions required simultaneous logins; now, using IPFS effectively realizes offline stores. This means that the more people visit your store, the more store data is replicated, benefiting the promotion and publicity of quality stores, which is a return of value in a certain sense.
IPFS Big Data Archiving
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Cancer Gene Trust, cancer fund credential database.
Cancer Gene Trust (CGT) is a distributed shared medical data project based on IPFS, used for the rapid storage and sharing of somatic cancer data and related clinical information. It discovers an unprecedented amount of somatic cancer data through access to open public data subsets. It allows researchers to focus on using and analyzing data rather than searching for different data from multiple sources. This unified data search and access is unprecedented for clinical cancer datasets. The project aims to extract key data from medical data worldwide and enable researchers, clinicians, and scientists to access data in a real-time, open, and trustworthy environment. CGT will store data on IPFS and submit the data hashes to the network, which can be permanently stored in any blockchain, with a Dapp managing the list containing this data through smart contracts on Ethereum. -
InterPlanetary Wayback, web archiving database.
InterPlanetary Wayback (IPWB) is a web archiving project based on IPFS, promoting persistence and coordination in web archiving by propagating the content of WARC files to the IPFS network. -
Uport, identity system database.
Uport is a distributed open identity system based on Ethereum, designed to return personal identity to individuals. Uport's open identity system allows users to register their identity information on Ethereum, send requests, sign transactions, and securely manage keys and data. Uport stores data on the IPFS network. -
ConsenSys, infrastructure building.
ConsenSys is a global organization composed of technology experts and entrepreneurs, aiming to build a distributed network world, providing infrastructure, applications, and practices for blockchain. ConsenSys has its own light media, using a sentinel warning system to collect immutable evidence from the Syrian civil war and upload it to Ethereum. ConsenSys stores files on the IPFS network. -
arXiv, scientific paper database.
This is the famous arXiv (https://arxiv.org/), a preprint website collecting papers in physics, mathematics, computer science, and biology, which started on August 14, 1991. By October 2008, the site had collected over 500,000 preprints, reaching 1 million by the end of 2014. By October 2016, the submission rate exceeded 10,000 per month. Such a massive amount of data is certainly stored on the IPFS network, significantly reducing storage costs and improving storage security.
IPFS Job Recruitment
- Ethlance, Ethereum-based job recruitment platform.
Ethlance (https://ethlance.com/) is a distributed job recruitment platform based on Ethereum, comparable to platforms like Piggyback or Zhaopin on Ethereum. This platform uses Ether as the payment currency and is built on the IPFS network. Ethlance claims a 0% service fee, is completely decentralized, and offers unlimited free membership. This is much better than domestic recruitment websites, which often charge high fees and have serious privacy issues.
Ethlance uses the d0xINFRA framework, which is designed to be open and extensible, allowing districts to implement unique features and enhancements through auxiliary module plugins. This is also the first area on the district0x network that will operate permanently.
IPFS Media Network
- AdEx, advertising network.
AdEx (https://www.adex.network/) is a blockchain-based advertising network aimed at breaking the existing online advertising pattern and addressing pain points in the advertising industry: ad fraud, privacy, and acceptance of advertiser information. Therefore, AdEx is completely transparent and built on Ethereum smart contracts. The project stores data on the IPFS platform, truly providing a secure, transparent, and beneficial platform for advertisers and publishers. This project has participation from Wu Jihan and Zhou Shuoji.
IPFS Project Rating Application
- WINGS, project rating.
WINGS (https://blog.wings.ai/) is a blockchain rating project based on ETH and IPFS, primarily rating projects through AI intelligence. The interface looks quite good, but project ratings are still more reliable when done by humans.
IPFS Financial Trading Applications
- Zengold, gold trading.
Zengold (https://zengold.org/) is an app related to gold, primarily focused on gold trading, based on IPFS, possibly placing the app's data on the IPFS network.
Future IPFS application scenarios:
- Practical development of DApps with IPFS and Ethereum.
The benefits of combining IPFS with Ethereum DApps are that writing data to the blockchain on the Ethereum platform requires spending Ether, and executing each line of code in smart contracts incurs a certain amount of gas transaction fees. Storing large data on the blockchain is costly and unreasonable. Files can be stored on IPFS first, then the file's hash can be stored on the Ethereum blockchain. When reading files, the hash can be retrieved from the Ethereum blockchain, and then the file can be read from the IPFS network.
Using the official ipfs-api provided, it is very convenient to operate nodes in the code to upload data to IPFS or read data from IPFS through hashes.
The Truffle framework provides a quick setup for React projects that include Ethereum smart contracts, allowing you to create a project with "truffle unbox react" and then install the ipfs-api dependency library. Thus, you can conveniently call IPFS interfaces in the frontend to read and upload files.
- IPFS Node Desktop Management App: IPFS Desktop.
IPFS Desktop is an application project incubated by the official IPFS application community, aimed at helping users better run and manage their nodes locally and view IPFS node resource information at any time. It has the following features:
- Automatically create local WEB services.
- Query node information ID, IP address, total bandwidth, and upload/download speeds.
- File resource upload and management; pinned node hash records.
- View connected nodes.
- Firefox 59 supports distributed protocols.
On January 26, 2018, Mike Conca, the product manager for Firefox WebExtensions, published an article on the Mozilla website (Extensions in Firefox 59), listing the latest extensions in Firefox 59 (currently released in beta). One feature is support for distributed protocols, including IPFS.
Recently approved protocols include:
- Dat Project (dat://)
- IPFS (dweb:// ipfs:// ipns://)
- Secure Scuttlebutt (ssb://)
Firefox itself does not implement these protocols, but including them on the approved list means the browser recognizes them as valid protocols, and extensions can provide implementations.
- Brave Browser.
The latest version will support the IPFS protocol.
Brave Browser is a web browser with powerful ad-blocking features, developed by former Mozilla CEO Eich. The desktop version of Brave Browser is based on the Chromium kernel, capable of blocking web ads and providing tracking protection, HTTPSEverywhere, and other features. This feature allows users to "block phishing sites" at any time, which is very popular among older users who do not frequently browse the internet, reducing the likelihood of users being harmed by phishing sites. Additionally, the private cloud provided can replace original website ads with anonymous ads, meaning all ads do not exist under this browser, as all ads are blocked, significantly improving web loading and browsing speed, providing users with a better web browsing experience. It is a non-Google-led open-source browser, which benefits niche demands. The interface is quite appealing, but currently, the features are still limited! Curious friends may want to download and try it out.
Summary
These diverse applications are now built on the IPFS network. Once the Filecoin mainnet goes live, many applications will migrate to the Filecoin network. This will lay a solid foundation for the future of web 3.0. The previous generation of the internet solved the problem of information asymmetry, while the next generation of blockchain internet aims to solve the problem of credit asymmetry, with the greatest reliance on data credibility and the ownership of data rights. By addressing the issue of credit asymmetry, the overall transaction costs for society can be significantly reduced. Therefore, the power of the IPFS network is beyond everyone's imagination, which is also an important reason why Filecoin is favored by many miners. With strong application scenarios, the development prospects of IPFS will also be immeasurable.