Content Addressed P2P File System for the Web with Blockchain-Based Meta-Data Integrity

TL;DR

This paper proposes a decentralized web file system combining IPFS for content addressing with blockchain for securing meta-data, enhancing data integrity and availability on the Internet.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model integrating IPFS with blockchain to ensure data integrity and secure meta-data management for web-based file storage.

Findings

Enhanced data integrity through blockchain-secured meta-data

Decentralized storage reduces bandwidth and improves availability

Immutable links facilitate reliable data referencing

Abstract

With the exponentially scaled World Wide Web, the standard HTTP protocol has started showing its limitations. With the increased amount of data duplication & accidental deletion of files on the Internet, the P2P file system called IPFS completely changes the way files are stored. IPFS is a file storage protocol allowing files to be stored on decentralized systems. In the HTTP client-server protocol, files are downloaded from a single source. With files stored on a decentralized network, IPFS allows packet retrieval from multiple sources, simultaneously saving considerable bandwidth. IPFS uses a content-addressed block storage model with content-addressed hyperlinks. Large amounts of data is addressable with IPFS with the immutable and permanent IPFS links with meta-data stored as Blockchain transactions. This timestamps and secures the data, instead of having to put it on the chain itself. Our paper proposes a model that uses the decentralized file storage system of IPFS, and the integrity preservation properties of the Blockchain, to store and distribute data on the Web.