Content Addressed Peer-to-Peer File System for the Web with Blockchain-based Metadata Integrity

Abstract

With the exponentially scaled World Wide Web, the standard HTTP protocol has started showing its limitations. With an 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 has 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 can 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 to use the decentralized file storage system of IPFS, and the integrity preservation properties of the Blockchain, to store and distribute data on the Web.