IPFS Weekly’s Q3 2020 Recap Issue

IPFS Weekly’s Q3 2020 Recap Issue

# Welcome to the IPFS Weekly!

A quick look back at what we accomplished together in the InterPlanetary File System (opens new window) galaxy and beyond! 🚀

# Thank you. We couldn’t do this without you. ❤️

What a long, strange trip the past few months have been. We are so grateful for every single contributor who took the time to submit issues, apply for grants, invent in a hackathon, participate in surveys, share a pull request, attend an event, or offer encouragement. Thank you for all you do to make our community a fantastic place to be.

# Jumping right into July

New quarter, new project! We kicked this one off with an introduction to the IPFS Case Study Series (opens new window)! Includes features on Fleek, Arbol, Audius, and more.

Libp2p and ResNetLab teamed up to ship a comprehensive, 61-page evaluation report on Gossipsub (opens new window), in which you can learn how they approached the testing of Gossipsub v1.1, the setting in which tests were run, and detailed descriptions of the conclusions taken from the evaluation.

The js-ipfs 0.48.0 release (opens new window) included much better default connectivity, a smaller blockstore, a more intuitive API, and loads of new features and bugfixes.

This content routing deep dive (opens new window) from the 0.5 release covered everything you wanted to know about how DHTs work, and how we made the implementation used by IPFS faster and more resilient.

ProtoSchool created new dweb courses (opens new window) from the many tutorials they offer. Peruse courses on IPFS, Filecoin, Multiformats, and more with updated content from the latest releases.

Oli Evans created a way to pin your site to IPFS from a GitHub Action (opens new window)! The action pins a directory to IPFS by using the ipfs-cluster-ctl command to pin it to a remote IPFS Cluster.

# And, another month, August

We announced deprecation of the SECIO security transport (opens new window) in favor of the Noise security transport.

Our August virtual meetup (opens new window) hosted talks from Unstoppable Domains, the builders of Koda the Robot Dog, Ceramic, and more.

The virtual hackathon, HackFS wrapped up (opens new window), showcasing 135+ projects built with IPFS and Filecoin.

The first-ever Randomness Summit (opens new window) took place, addressing the state of randomness beacon research and deployment, and was a great success.

Yiannis Psaras shared the merits of content addressability in a world increasingly reliant on internet networks in How content addressing can solve streaming challenges as networks are overloaded (opens new window).

Chromium announced support (opens new window) for: “cabal”, “dat”, “did”, “dweb”, “ethereum”, “hyper”, “ipfs”, “ipns”, and “ssb”. Another step forward for browser support and webcompat!

The Filecoin team started hosting a series of Master Classes (opens new window) to demonstrate how to build on the Filecoin network. In the first session, Jimmy Lee highlighted how to integrate the Slate API with IPFS and Filecoin.

# Staying the course in September

Obsidian Systems began their efforts to add support for IPFS to Nix (opens new window), a package manager (but at its heart a general-purpose build tool), so that build products can be persisted to and fetched from IPFS.

js-ipfs officially reached version 0.50.0 (opens new window), adding the ability to share a node between multiple browser tabs and greatly improved pinning performance.

In September we had the creators of IPFS Recovery, a HackFS project, and an update from the go-ipfs maintainers speak at our monthly virtual community meetup (opens new window).

Our pals at Peergos were awarded a €200,000 grant by the Next Generation Internet Program for Open Internet Renovation (opens new window) (NGI-POINTER).

Chrome Beta extended their safelist (opens new window) distributed web schemes for registerProtocolHandler(). IPFS was included alongside cabal, dat, did, dweb, ethereum, hyper, ipns, and ssb.

The IPFS Web UI team shipped a whole host of new features in v2.11.0 (opens new window) to make your IPFS experience smooth, sleek, and chic.

The podcast Proof of Usability (opens new window) interviewed IPFS & Filecoin designers Jessica Schilling and Jimmy Lee.

You can now search all of the podcasts available to stream on IPFS (opens new window), courtesy of Pod.casts.io and Andrew Nesbitt.

The latest iteration of go-IPFS, v0.7.0 (opens new window), landed and with it, the deprecation of SECIO, updates to IPNS paths, and some important plugin build changes. 🎉

# Also new this quarter...

Michael Sena, from Ceramic, asked, what is Identity Index (opens new window)?

Origin opened Dshop (opens new window) for business so you can launch a free, decentralized store in minutes.

Peergos released v0.3.0 (opens new window) landing improvements to the S3 datastore, and now you can test their alpha!

Fleek introduced Space (opens new window), an open-source file storage, sharing, and collaboration platform built on the distributed web.

The OrbitDB community created PowergateIO (opens new window), a bridge between OrbitDB and Powergate, which is a bridge between Filecoin and IPFS.

Galacteek released v0.4.33 (opens new window), which shipped a critical fix to their multi-platform browser for the distributed web

The Audius Project shipped some sleek Audius API Docs (opens new window).

Textile released v1.0.0 of go-threads (opens new window), a server-less p2p database built on libp2p.

QuestNetwork introduced qDesk (opens new window), an open-source, trustless, peer-to-peer cross-platform social network.

Equilibrium shipped an update on improving the integration of the Rust IPFS client with Substrate (opens new window).

The DAG JOSE (opens new window) project by Adam Good kicked off.

Keep up the great work team! We can’t wait to see what you do in the next few months. 🎉

# Missed a meetup? We got you 😊



Catch up on all of the presentations, updates, and lightning talks from Q3 by subscribing to the [IPFS Virtual Meetups playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuhRWgmPaHtToVYaDkd6ZTwB2Lo30s1vB).

# Great reads from Q3 👇

Beyond Bitswap (opens new window) by Alfonso de la Rocha

An Introduction to IPFS (opens new window) (Interplanetary File System) by Dr. Christian Lundkvist, John Lilic, and Cheryl Douglass

How Hongkongers can use new technologies to preserve their democratic rights (opens new window) by Roger Huang, Hong Kong Free Press

Create and sell Unity Prefabs as Crypto Collectible NFTs using IPFS (opens new window) by Leon Do, Pinata

Web 3.0 would enable new possibilities and opportunities (opens new window) by Zhong Gengfa, Cointelegraph

HackFS kickstarts project development in Web 3.0 (opens new window) by Yohan Yun, Forkast

# Coming up next

So what’s next for IPFS? 🤔

Our community is excited for Filecoin launch, which officially begins October 19th with a week of Filecoin Mainnet Liftoff (opens new window) events and celebrations!

TypeScript support is coming to IPFS in the near future. For more information, check out the js-ipfs Project Roadmap (opens new window).

Some exciting projects are in the works, sponsored by the IPFS Dev Grants program (opens new window), including collaborations with Libre Space Foundation, OpenStreetMap, Nix, and more!

If you’d like to get involved, check out our contribution guidelines (opens new window), take a peek at the docs (opens new window), and come to IPFS Office Hours (opens new window) to get pointers on where to start!

Take care of yourselves and each other. ❤️

Get involved with IPFS by checking us out on GitHub (opens new window), joining discussions on our community forum (opens new window), or hitting us up in chat (opens new window). Have a suggestion? Email us.

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