this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Technology
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I think IPFS often unfairly gets lumped in with crypto bro shite but it seems to me like a pretty useful technology in many other contexts too.
Sorry if this is a dumb question but what does IPFS do that torrents can't do?
Torrents identify groups of files, and different torrents with the same files will have different hashes and clients will download them from different peers, split across different trackers. IPFS identifies unique files, and all copies of the same files are available to all clients.
Thanks. That makes sense. I wonder why torrents couldn't be somehow adapted for this use case though. They're way more widespread than IPFS.
I suppose they could with a protocol revision but then we'd end up with another IPFS. Older torrents would still need to work the old way, so instead of torrents and IPFS, there would be old torrents, new torrents, and IPFS, further fragmenting access to files.
Ah yeah, good catch. I think I have to learn about IPFS and how to use it :)