Design and Evaluation of IPFS: A Storage Layer for the Decentralized Web
Yiannis Psaras
About this talk
In this SIGCOMM 2022 technical session, the authors present the design and evaluation of IPFS (the InterPlanetary File System), a community-driven storage layer powering a growing slice of the decentralized web. The talk walks through how IPFS combines content-addressable storage, a Kademlia-based distributed hash table for peer and content discovery, and the Bitswap block-exchange protocol to let any participant publish, locate, and retrieve data without relying on centralized servers. Drawing on large-scale measurements of the live network, the speakers examine real-world performance — including content-routing latency, retrieval times, and the geographic distribution of peers — and discuss the trade-offs between decentralization, scalability, and user-perceived speed. They close by reflecting on lessons learned from operating a production decentralized storage system and outline open challenges for making the decentralized web competitive with traditional content delivery infrastructure.