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Does IPFS actually have users? I remeber when they raised 270 million and a bunch of people there got wildly wealthy

2color 25d ago
You can see public network metrics here: https://probelab.io/ipfs/ https://probelab.io/ipfs/ About 800k unique DHT clients are seen weekly.
dewey 25d ago
The only place where I regularly stumble upon on it was/is on libgen.
runarberg 25d ago
Wait are you telling me yet another supposedly ground breaking technology turned out to be yet another grift. I know a lot of people on HN are going to call me overly cynical. But this pattern should be so obvious by now. Any cynicism to any new ground breaking technology which is gonna solve a problem that exists because of capitalism, that this cynicism is more than warranted. At this point we should all be cynical of any new technology.
- dgellow 25d ago
  Yeah, I now understand why gray beards are seen as grumpy. Mine isn’t gray yet, but after the 2010s and half of 2020s I can only see as very suspicious any new technology pushed hard by the industry
- deleted 25d ago
  [deleted]
- int_19h 25d ago
  New technology has always benefitted first and foremost those in power, simply because people who get to extract wealth from the rest of society can then direct that wealth to acquire new tech first. This was equally true in pre-capitalist societies, or in USSR for that matter. Being cynical about the tech itself is a bridge to nowhere, though, because it does not preclude its existence or usage, it just cuts you away from any benefits that you can personally get out of it - but you're still affected by all the downsides. Don't be cynical about tech. Be angry at the people who want to own it all and use it to exploit you.
airspresso 25d ago
Most of the generative art is hosted on IPFS.
muragekibicho 25d ago
I guess IPFS is an artifact from the crypto craze. It's pretty silly if you think of it. However, I must admit, I got my first ever developer grant from Filecoin while they were flush with ZIRP era money. btw,I thought it was an Initial Coin Offering, not an actual fundraise.
- gwerbin 25d ago
  What's silly about it? Content-addressable decentralized storage -- not tied to a cryptocurrency -- is really valuable for censorship-resistant archiving of politically-sensitive data (such as climate change research).
  - muragekibicho 25d ago
    It's the crypto aspect that's silly. Tech is cool IMO. However, the crypto adjacency makes it all look scammy tbh.
    - Grombobulous 25d ago
      In addition to that, this noble goal of being an insurance policy against censorship never played out. How hard would it be for a country to block the clients and browser extensions you need to use it in the first place? Or to develop a firewall technology that’s capable of blocking the traffic? Probably not that hard, especially since nobody uses IPFS for anything business critical since it’s not all that great at doing things that you need from file storage systems. Most reasons you store files somewhere benefit from not being decentralized. You usually want some combination of performance, security, durability, and availability. Decentralization is not generally a demand of file storage. The only reason it’s decentralized is because blockchain and crypto was hype 10 years ago.
      - chriswarbo 25d ago
        > The only reason it’s decentralized is because blockchain and crypto was hype 10 years ago. IPFS is not "blockchain" or "crypto"(currency). It's much closer to git-over-bittorrent. Note that both of those things were decentralised long before "blockchain" and "crypto" existed. The makers of IPFS also made a crypto thing called Filecoin; but that's a different project. Avoiding IPFS because of crypto is like avoiding the Web because of social media.
devttyeu 25d ago
I run a company currently serving ~1.7B requests per day (~20k/s) to ipfs gateways, so presumably still some. Very likely a big chunk of that is bots scraping stuff.

You can see public network metrics here: https://probelab.io/ipfs/ https://probelab.io/ipfs/ About 800k unique DHT clients are seen weekly.

dewey 25d ago

The only place where I regularly stumble upon on it was/is on libgen.

runarberg 25d ago

Wait are you telling me yet another supposedly ground breaking technology turned out to be yet another grift. I know a lot of people on HN are going to call me overly cynical. But this pattern should be so obvious by now. Any cynicism to any new ground breaking technology which is gonna solve a problem that exists because of capitalism, that this cynicism is more than warranted. At this point we should all be cynical of any new technology.

dgellow 25d ago
Yeah, I now understand why gray beards are seen as grumpy. Mine isn’t gray yet, but after the 2010s and half of 2020s I can only see as very suspicious any new technology pushed hard by the industry
deleted 25d ago
[deleted]
int_19h 25d ago
New technology has always benefitted first and foremost those in power, simply because people who get to extract wealth from the rest of society can then direct that wealth to acquire new tech first. This was equally true in pre-capitalist societies, or in USSR for that matter. Being cynical about the tech itself is a bridge to nowhere, though, because it does not preclude its existence or usage, it just cuts you away from any benefits that you can personally get out of it - but you're still affected by all the downsides. Don't be cynical about tech. Be angry at the people who want to own it all and use it to exploit you.

airspresso 25d ago

Most of the generative art is hosted on IPFS.

muragekibicho 25d ago

I guess IPFS is an artifact from the crypto craze. It's pretty silly if you think of it. However, I must admit, I got my first ever developer grant from Filecoin while they were flush with ZIRP era money. btw,I thought it was an Initial Coin Offering, not an actual fundraise.

gwerbin 25d ago
What's silly about it? Content-addressable decentralized storage -- not tied to a cryptocurrency -- is really valuable for censorship-resistant archiving of politically-sensitive data (such as climate change research).
- muragekibicho 25d ago
  It's the crypto aspect that's silly. Tech is cool IMO. However, the crypto adjacency makes it all look scammy tbh.
  - Grombobulous 25d ago
    In addition to that, this noble goal of being an insurance policy against censorship never played out. How hard would it be for a country to block the clients and browser extensions you need to use it in the first place? Or to develop a firewall technology that’s capable of blocking the traffic? Probably not that hard, especially since nobody uses IPFS for anything business critical since it’s not all that great at doing things that you need from file storage systems. Most reasons you store files somewhere benefit from not being decentralized. You usually want some combination of performance, security, durability, and availability. Decentralization is not generally a demand of file storage. The only reason it’s decentralized is because blockchain and crypto was hype 10 years ago.
    - chriswarbo 25d ago
      > The only reason it’s decentralized is because blockchain and crypto was hype 10 years ago. IPFS is not "blockchain" or "crypto"(currency). It's much closer to git-over-bittorrent. Note that both of those things were decentralised long before "blockchain" and "crypto" existed. The makers of IPFS also made a crypto thing called Filecoin; but that's a different project. Avoiding IPFS because of crypto is like avoiding the Web because of social media.

devttyeu 25d ago

I run a company currently serving ~1.7B requests per day (~20k/s) to ipfs gateways, so presumably still some. Very likely a big chunk of that is bots scraping stuff.