IPFS

IPFS

Filecoin is built on the same underlying stack as IPFS - including connecting nodes peer-to-peer via libp2p and addressing data using IPLD. Therefore, it borrows many concepts from the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), such as content addressing, the CID (which, strictly speaking, is part of the Multiformats specification) and Merkle-DAGs (which is part of IPLD). It also makes direct use of Bitswap (the data transfer algorithm in IPFS) and UnixFS (the file format built on top of IPLD Merkle-Dags).

Bitswap

Bitswap is a simple peer-to-peer data exchange protocol, used primarily in IPFS, which can also be used independently of the rest of the pieces that make up IPFS. In Filecoin, Bitswap is used to request and receive blocks when a node is synchonized (“caught up”) but GossipSub has failed to deliver some blocks to a node.

Please refer to the Bitswap specification for more information.

UnixFS

UnixFS is a protocol buffers-based format for describing files, directories, and symlinks in IPFS. UnixFS is used in Filecoin as a file formatting guideline for files submitted to the Filecoin network.

Please refer to the UnixFS specification for more information.