FAQ

In this document you will find answers to common "newbie" questions (quotes because the questions are very reasonable!). If you're adding to this document, please refactor it to improve the structure as more questions get added.

IPFS Questions

What is IPFS?

IPFS is a protocol, not storage. It's a framework to advertise and find data. Think of IPFS like bittorrent -- data isn't stored on bittorrent, but you find it and transfer it using the bittorrent protocol.

What does pinning mean?

Pinning is an agreement by a third-party that your data will be available. For example, when you pin your data with web3.storage or pinata.cloud, they are basically running an IPFS daemon behind the API and exposing it to the public IPFS network. Whenever you request that CID it will get the data from their IPFS server. By "pinning" they are saying that they won't delete it and it will remain available. Think of pinning providers like bittorrent seeders.