eli5

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

Ethereum

Computational biologist, data scientist, digital artist | 
https://clauswilke.art/links | Hosting /ai-art & /clauswilke

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/

Operator turned investor. Work in TradFi.  @crossroads 🟪

You can do 100 but will be a while before bigger amounts

same. @dwr wen warp tips? (twarps? warts? wips?)

I wish I could gift warps for a banger response.

DX Engineer | DevRel at OpenZeppelin | Building orbiter.host & bhvr.dev | opinions are my own

But of course I am biased; take my opinions as such ;)

I think both can have their place but they work totally differently. IPFS can be run by yourself or by a provider; it’s open software peer to peer software like torrent (but better). It can be run by individuals or by services (@pinatacloud). Arweave and its fate is tied to a token, which is good & bad imo

IPFS is a file sharing protocol, Arweave is a tokenized storage solution (Filecoin is the attempt to tokenize IPFS). Arweave has a goal of making content permanent, whereas IPFS is just a protocol that gives you the option to persist content or not (but Filecoin could be used to make it more archival).

Arweave: One payment, data stored forever

IPFS: Free to store data. But there’s not a 100% chance of data retrieval if the nodes storing your data go offline or stop storing it

Web Tinkerer. DWeb. Open Source. Community. Just another one of the bees 🐝

Default setups for IPFS nodes leak your IP. Which isn’t great. 

Run it over Tor or NymTech for enhanced privacy.

IPFS: no blockchain, no masters.

Hash some content, stick it on a USB key and put it in a drawer. Put it back online 2 years later and it’s still provably online. 

“Someone” has to care to keep it online. You know, just like registering a domain name and running a server. 

But ANYONE can keep a hash online.

IPFS starts with a universal, self verifiable address for content - content addressing that is location independent.

This means where & how content is stored has many options.

Arweave is a blockchain that tokenizes content storage focused on “forever” storage.

The two can be used together.

You should also check ceramic.network for structure, composable and searchable stuff owned by your wallet that your users might not want to store onchain 🙂.

Filecoin is like Arweave in that with the Filecoin token you can pay storage miners to actually host that content on IPFS for X number of years. Instead of doing a blockchain computation, they’re simply storing the content. It’s designed for long form archival storage and is a bit slower than how fast IPFS can be

Filecoin is like the archival storage for IPFS. IPFS shares files by having the content hosted on the origin node, and it can be replicated by other nodes who also decide to pin the content. That “storing” is happening by the node itself, which is a computer or server hosting it. 1/