The blockchain is a decentralised and distributed database, but it has a very big problem: the cost of storage. The blockchain must always store strictly what is necessary, not one piece of data more, not one piece of data less, since the transactions associated with safeguarding the information are highly costly, and the heavier the data, the more it costs to store it.

So what is to be done with the rest of the information, if only the most essential of each element is to be stored on the blockchain? That is where IPFS, the Inter-Planetary File System, comes in.

What is IPFS? It is a set of protocols and technologies that enable the storage of data of any nature within a decentralised system. Based on p2p networks, IPFS uses content-based addressing that replaces the client-server model architecture, which from a hash generates an address to a file that is requested by a peer or user on the blockchain, with each content having a hash that uniquely and unambiguously references it.

In short, IPFS solves the problem of scalability of data storage costs that exists in some blockchains such as Ethereum, Bitcoin and Tezos, as well as the problems of information modification using basic principles of computer security that have to do with peer-to-peer cryptography in decentralised networks.

Did you like this very short article? Soon we'll be sharing more technological material oriented to Bitcoin and NFTs, but if you want us to talk about any other topic you can commenting us about it, best regards 👋