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We are the owners and core maintainers of many of the important tools and services in the IPFS ecosystem!

We take comprehensive ownership seriously, particularly “ongoing maintenance”, which includes bug fixes, security patches, dependency updating, interoperability testing, and regular releases. We catch a host of issues before they get to you (example)! Our efforts are also applied towards improving performance and expanding feature sets based on user input.

IPFS Implementations and Libraries

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Kubo

Kubo was the first IPFS implementation and with its broad featureset and years of integrations. It is also the most popular general purpose implementation with 50+ million Docker pulls and 80% prevalence in the Amino DHT.

Upcoming

  • Exposing new libp2p connectivity transports including WebRTC for connectivity with all modern browsers, even with NATs.
  • Expose DHT improvements with Reprovide Sweep for dramatically faster provide operations for large data providers.
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Boxo

Boxo is a set of libraries to enable developers to build IPFS applications and implementations in GO. It powers Kubo, Cluster, Rainbow and more.

Upcoming

  • Data transfer orchestrator that can leverage multiple data transfer protocols like Bitswap and HTTP Trustless Gateway API for better performance and resiliency.
  • Bitswap revision for better performance and reliability.
  • Generating
    💐
    Examples showing how to solve problems in user space
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Helia

A lean, modular, and modern TypeScript implementation of IPFS for the prolific JS and browser environments.

Upcoming

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Rainbow

A performance-focused IPFS HTTP Gateway intended to power ipfs.io and beyond.

Upcoming

  • Rollout to ipfs.io gateway.
  • Measure and report on infrastructure savings and performance improvements.
  • Evangelize and support amongst #ipfs-operators community to drive down their infrastructure and maintenance costs.
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Cluster

For when you need a solution that scales across multiple hosts, Cluster provides data orchestration across a swarm of IPFS daemons by allocating, replicating and tracking a global pinset distributed among multiple peers. Cloud users often adopt IPFS cluster (examples 1, 2, 3).

Upcoming

  • No immediate plans beyond maintenance. This is subject to user demand.
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Custom Implementations and Integrations

We don’t intend “one implementation to rule them all”, even for a particular language or runtime. Certain applications and environments can really benefit from a tailored implementation that still leverages much/most of the existing IPFS tooling. As part of , we can be hired to curate to your needs.

IPFS Tools and Integrations

First Class User Agent Integrations (Especially Browsers)

Our team has been key partners on the multi-year and multi-stakeholder journey of getting IPFS in common user agents like browsers. This includes the first-class integrations in Brave and curl, in-development efforts of supporting ipfs:// URLs in Chromium, and even more general custom protocol handling in browsers.

We relentlessly pursue ensuring the appropriate specs and supporting implementations are in place to enable “ipfs://” URL support in any browser location bar.

Upcoming

IPFS Companion

IPFS Companion is a browser extension that augments a browser with a local IPFS node for a more trustless browsing experience. It currently has 65M+ monthly active users. It was recently overhauled to support the latest MV3 browser extension standards, providing a strong foundation to build on for the future.

Upcoming

  • Enable an embedded Helia option, bringing IPFS to more users without the need of a separate Kubo node.

IPFS Desktop

IPFS Desktop serves as the frontdoor for many users who are first learning about IPFS. By bundling a simple install, GUI, and auto-updating, a new user can get started with a local Kubo node in minutes. IPFS Desktop currently has 12M+ monthly active users.

Upcoming

  • Nothing planned currently beyond maintaining compatibility new Kubo releases.

“IPFS Waterworks”: Common Network Infrastructure

We own and operate some of the critical network infrastructure for the IPFS ecosystem, what we affectionately refer to as the “IPFS Waterworks”. These include:

ipfs.io / dweb.link HTTP gateway

These gateways makes it possible for Internet users to access and view data hosted by third parties on the IPFS network. In 2023, they weekly served approximately 11M unique IPs and 1B requests. They’re an onramp for users to start dabbling with IPFS before they transition to more peer-to-peer solutions. While there 60+ public gateways, these are some of the most popular given their long history and IPFS brand association.

Upcoming

  • It’s not sustainable to proxy IPFS traffic over HTTP without limits, plus it can serve as a hindrance to p2p adoption. We’ll instead enforce resource limits, with error pages that guide users to alternatives, including using Helia in the browser.
  • Reduce infastructure expenses with resource limits and Rainbow.
  • Launch trustless-gateway.link that only exposes the Trustless Gateway API for better resiliency for browser nodes.

Amino DHT bootstrappers

These bootstrappers serve as trusted peers to enable approximately ~250k active nodes per week to join the Amino DHT. Similar to a resilient blockchain network, we run multiple software implementations to improve resiliency.

Upcoming

  • Add js-libp2p-based instance for extra resiliency and production insights.
  • Public dashboard of service health.

Badbits pipeline

Bad bits handling (e.g., illegal content in one’s jurisdiction, malicious website hosting) is a common problem for gateway operators. We have a pipeline that takes in reports and handles blocking the corresponding CIDs with automated and manual processes. This list of bad bits content is publicly shared with ~X blocked CIDs, including some Y block requests per week.

Upcoming

  • Pipeline overhaul to enable continued scaling and lower infrastructure costs.

Collab cluster

We host our own IPFS Cluster instance to pin useful content for the community like Kubo binaries and wikipedia datasets. This also helps ensure we have experience operating the software we vend.

Upcoming

  • We have no plans currently to turn this in to a public pinning service. We’re instead committed to supporting and advocating for the commercial pinning services offered by others.

Spec Championing

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Our loyalty is to the protocols, and good protocols mean good specs. As a result, since their inception, we have been active participants in the InterPlanetary Improvement Process (IPIP), often authoring or helping shepherding specs to and through ratification and implementation.

Consulting and Support

As open source maintainers, there is standard engagement we do in our repos as issues are reported and features are requested. We also know from years working in the ecosystem that there are users and companies in our ecosystem that are (or want to) use IPFS (or libp2p) but have some sort of issue with the existing libraries and implementations.

❓ Are you a company building on IPFS and you’ve been hacking around issues in Kubo, Helia, etc.? We can help either fix the problems in those implementations or help build tooling that enables solving the problems with you

❓ Are you a company interested in using IPFS, but after your initial demo you’re not sure where to get started? We can help you navigate your journey.

Engagements here can be one-time in nature for things like architecture consulting, bug fixing, or acute feature development. They can also be recurring with supporting certain features long term or helping shepherd ideas through specs/governance processes.

Per

, this is newer territory for us in a formalized way, but we welcome you to
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