IPFS Specs

This repository contains the specs for the IPFS Protocol and associated subsystems. Some day we will hopefully transform these specs into RFCs. For now, they assume a high level of familiarity with the concepts.

Work In Progress

Warning: this is a work in progress. IPFS is a young system and we want to get it right. We will continue to evaluate and re-think pieces. At this point, the IPFS protocol is solid enough to write this spec and produce interoperable implementations in different languages.

(This is not done yet, but.) I will tag different specs with their stability:

• wip this spec is a work-in-progress, it is likely not even complete.
• draft this spec is a rough draft and will likely change substantially.
• stable this spec is likely to improve, but not change fundamentally.
• reliable this spec is believed to be close to final. Minor changes only.
• permanent this spec will not change.

Nothing in this spec repository is permanent yet. The most important pieces of IPFS are now reliable or stable. Many subsystems remain as draft.

Note that, as in many IPFS repositories, most of the work is happening in the issues or in active pull requests. Go take a look!

Specs

The specs contained in this repository are:

Protocol:

• protocol - the top-level spec and the stack

Stack:

• network - the network layer spec
• routing - the routing layer spec
• exchange - the exchange layer spec
• merkledag - the Merkle DAG layer spec
• ipns - the naming layer spec
• app - the application layer spec

Routing Systems:

• kademlia - Kademlia DHT
• dnssd - mDNS for local area networks
• snr - supernode delegated routing
• multirouter - combines multiple others

Exchanges:

• bitswap - BitTorrent-inspired exchange

Service:

• service - the spec IPFS libraries and servers should implement
• service-http-api - the HTTP API version of ipfs-service
• service-cli - the CLI version of ipfs-service

Repository:

• repo - IPFS node local repository spec
• config - IPFS node configuration
• fs-repo - the spec of the fs-repo implementation

Other protocols:

• id - node identification
• relay - the relay protocol

Formats:

• multihash - self-describing hash digest format
• multiaddr - self-describing addressing format

Collaborating

Suggestions, contributions, criticisms are welcome. Though please make sure to familiarize yourself deeply with IPFS, the models it adopts, and the principles it follows.

Please be aware that specs are really hard to design by committee. Treat this space like you would the workshop of an artist. Please suggest improvements, but please don't be disappointed if we say no to something. What we leave out is often more important than what we add in.