Claus Wilke on Farcaster

Content pfp

https://warpcast.com/~/channel/eli5

0 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

Jonny Mack pfp

whats the difference between arweave and ipfs? why choose one over the other?

7 replies

1 recast

26 reactions

Claus Wilke pfp

They're completely different. One (IPFS) is a data retrieval protocol and one (Arweave) is a storage solution. Ideally Arweave would work with IPFS but it doesn't, which is a big pain. 1/

3 replies

1 recast

9 reactions

Claus Wilke pfp

IPFS guarantees that if you know what file you want and somebody has it they can give it to you. But it doesn't guarantee the file exists. Somebody needs to make sure the file continues to be stored. The nice thing is this could be you. Hence IPFS backup solutions -> https://www.clubnft.com/ 2/

1 reply

1 recast

3 reactions

Claus Wilke pfp

Arweave promises "pay now store forever (or at least 100 years)". It's a storage solution. It works like a pension fund. The idea is that future generations of storage use will cover the costs of keeping the old files around. This will work fine as long as the system is growing. But it makes me uncomfortable. 3/

1 reply

1 recast

3 reactions

Claus Wilke pfp

Just like any pension system that may run out of sufficiently many new paying members to pay the old obligations Arweave could in principle run out of sufficient demand to store the old data. They try to ensure this is not the case, but 100 years is a long time. 4/

1 reply

1 recast

2 reactions

Claus Wilke pfp

Ideally we would use IPFS for retrieval and Arweave for storage, and then we wouldn't have to worry about potential failures of Arweave because we could also make independent backups. But that's not how Arweave currently works and this makes backups much more complicated. 5/

2 replies

0 recast

2 reactions

Steve pfp

@stevedylandev.eth

I believe if you really wanted an archival system to IPFS that would be Filecoin correct? Although I have my reservations about that as well

1 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

Claus Wilke pfp

Yes. I know even less about Filecoin but this rings true.

1 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

Claus Wilke pfp

What makes me worried about the pay once store forever solutions is they may not break for a long time (or ever), but _if_ they break it'll be catastrophic and too late. Systems with ongoing storage costs at least put front-and-center that somebody needs to think about maintaining the data.

1 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

Steve pfp

@stevedylandev.eth

It’s true, which is why I, and lots of other developers, feel uneasy about such promises. IPFS is designed with the notion that unwanted data shouldn’t be forever, to keep networks uncluttered yet persist content that people do value.

0 reply

0 recast

0 reaction