IPFS Virtual Meetups, 30 Apr 2021

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From YouTube: IPFS and Filecoin for the NFT Long Haul with Alan Shaw

Description

Alan Shaw, a software engineer at Protocol Labs, introduces us to nft.storage, a brand new service built specifically for storing off-chain NFT data on IPFS and Filecoin.

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A

uh Welcome hi, uh I'm I'm alan, I'm an engineer at protocol labs, um I'm kind of new to nfts. I guess we kind of all are really um when I found out about them and I was getting interested in them. um I was really happy to see that ipfs was being used to store them. So, um for instance, if I go to this uh nft marketplace site super rare, I can just kind of click through have a look at any nfts.

A

For instance, maybe this one and if I go do a little bit of spelunking in the ethereum blockchain I can just click through and have a look at the contract that was created for this particular nft paste. In the token id and look look here, it's an ipfs hash and this url is a url on a ipfs gateway, and I can just bring it up like that.

A

um So that's super cool uh nft is stored on ipfs um and um nft's, um the actual artwork, so the image or the um or the video or whatever it is that's that is the actual nft thing is, um is, is stored, usually off um off chain, and that's because it's prohibitively expensive to store a lot of data on chain and ipfs has some nice properties for off-chain data um that we'll go into in a little bit.

A

uh So, um as I learned more a little bit more about nfts, I came to realize that actually the developers that were enabling uh nft creators, um like uh so marketplaces like foundation like um super rare, like zora they they actually really cared about users being able to access their data, should they ever actually disappear.

A

Woof. So if they disappeared, they don't want that to happen. They don't want all of those nfts that people have bought created uh out there to just suddenly also disappear, um and so ipfs really fits this building, and that can actually help solve this problem, and so it's really not surprising that it's being used, but in case you're kind of new to ibfs. Let me just explain a little so um if you put data on an ipfs node, I've just chosen this little uh little image of a complete random.

A

It's an energy, it's a like some generated mountains or something. um But but if you put some data on an ipfs node, firstly, you get a content. Identifier, um a cid and um cids are a kind of cryptographic hash and they address the content, not its location, um and uh it means that given any given, cid will always refer to the same piece of content or, to put it another way, if the content changes the cid for that content would change.

A

Now, um if we didn't store an scid on on chain and use a regular url, then that could be problematic like the the url and the content at the end of the url could be deleted, it could be removed by the owner, like the domain could expire or the hosting perhaps expired, and it could just disappear off the internet completely.

A

um It also could be altered, so you could have like an image of a cat which is your favorite nft in the whole wide world um that actually, then, someone came along and changed it to the nfc of a dog and uh and you'd be darn annoyed about that um so yeah um also like maybe maybe like a url to um to some content, isn't accessible in your country. Maybe there's a big old firewall around your country that disallows you from accessing stuff.

A

um So actually you really need to be able to get things from uh from other nodes and and people and places that are uh within that boundary, so ipfs can help there um so uh anyway, how does this uh crd thing work? Well, um if someone else requests that data by its cid, then then they'll receive it and now two nodes have conserved the the content.

A

So that's super cool, it's kind of like this, uh so someone else can come along and they'll get the content and it means the original node that had the content can actually go away. It's gone and the data will still be retrievable from the other nodes.

A

There's caveats, of course, the two caveats to this: the caveat number one uh number one is that um or if, if all of the nodes that have the content go away, then nobody has the content. You can't get it anymore. uh So uh so we don't want that to happen. The second caveat is garbage collection, so, depending on your configuration of your ipfs node, garbage collection may run at like a certain time um when your configured repo storage limit, is here.

A

If you put too much stuff in there or it can be run completely manually, so there's like api, you can run it from the cli as well. um So what you need to do is tell ipfs that this content is not garbage. So this is a super rare nft, it's not trash, don't throw it in the trash ipfs.

A

So yeah they are the caveats, um and so this, this concept of like telling ipfs that something is not trash, um is what's often referred to as pinning in in ipfs, and uh if you don't pin that data it'll eventually be garbage collected. So, um even if the content is super popular and lots of people have it on the ipfs network, then it could still eventually exit the network.

A

If, uh if there's no one pinning it um if garbage collection runs um yeah, so that could happen, and so these two, these two caveats are, um are generally, why developers use a third party service uh like pinata, like textile, uh like fleeq, to store their content um and and- and that is because they have nodes that are publicly available, stay online, 24 7 and they pin the content so that it doesn't disappear off the network.

A

So nft.storage this is this is the thing it's a new thing that we've been working on hooray. um If you came to the nft hack, uh the eve global nft hack, then you might have uh recognized some of this talk and even nfc storage.

A

We built it originally for that, um but we're we're launching it publicly now and it's a place where you can store your nf, your off-chain nft data, and you can do that safe in the knowledge that it'll be there tomorrow um and it hopefully goes some way to solving that permanence problem and and it's free uh it's free for as long as we can possibly make it free um and the one of the big ideas it just should be easy to um to to store your data on ipfs. So um how does it work?

A

Well, uh you upload your uh nft data, your chain, nft data to nft.storage um and nfc.storage stores that data on ipfs nodes, so uh multiple nodes. So that's that's good um and okay, so far so good. But what is the difference between your regular pinning service? Well um behind the scenes? Anesthetic storage is actually negotiating deals with uh to store your data um with miners.

A

On the file coin network and um the filecoin network incentive incentivizes miners to store data, they get paid to store data and they also typically get paid when data is retrieved as well. So uh so why is that good? Well, um if, uh if initially the storage goes away and every ipfs peer, whoever fetched the content went away, uh then the miners will still have the content, uh because we've made deals with them and their miners.

A

They are mining on the network and they they're they're here for the long haul, um and so you can think of the miners as just another set of ipfs peers, with strong incentives to continue storing the data and so yeah nfl storage public launch is on thursday. um Hopefully, if everything goes to plan, the url is nft.storage and the site is up now. If you uh want to go and take a look, we have a super simple http api.

A

We have clients in javascript, uh go rust, ruby, python, php and java, and we also have an open api schema. um So if uh your your favorite uh programming language was not in that list that I just read out, then um then you should be able to generate a client in uh in that language relatively easily um or just use the http api directly.

A

um So after launch we're hoping to introduce a new metadata api uh which should make minting nfts even easier and it and it builds on a lot of those those best practices that yusef was talking about earlier and later, we're also going to be introducing wallet off, so nfts can truly be stored by content creators and not just by marketplaces on behalf of them cool. So we are also going to be starting.

A

Our save the nft's initiative, uh we're going to crawl the ethereum chain from the genesis uh and we're going to upload all the nfts we find to nft storage, so they'll be stored stored. So no more will incredible artworks.

A

The people have already created be lost in the sands of time, uh so uh yeah, it's not just if ethereum either we're going to see if we can um save nfts that are on other blockchains so um and of course, we'll be visualizing all that data on nft, storage um and uh and we've got this awesome idea to create a new nft checker, um there's already an nft checker, but this would be a new different one uh where you can query the health of your nft, um and uh so you could do stuff like see how many ipfs providers uh for your nft uh there are like.

A

You could see. Details of the file coin storage deals um of that nft like where it can, where what miners are storing it and uh what deals is it in um and and we'll obviously make all of those kind of metrics available to developers over a uh public api?

A

uh And um I think that's about all. I have to say, but thanks for listening.