IPFS this, IPFS that

IPFS, or the Inter Planetary File System, is a basically a global file system. Instead of URLs, you use unique identifiers (hashes) to determine where files you care about are located.

If you abstract a few things just the right way and relabel other things just a little bit differently, the current HTTP based internet is also a global file system.

Why, then, is IPFS a thing? It's backers claim p2p goodness of the same level as BitTorrent. It can reduce bandwidth costs. You can get around network constraints so long as some peer somewhere has a copy of your file. In the http world, if your server is down, you're knocked out. Your message will never get to your audience. This is not a concern with IPFS specially if what you have to say doesn't need to be regularly updated.

So, if you're Karl Marx II but today, you want to Netflix and chill and not talk about the class struggle, IPFS is perfect. Even if your personal IPFS daemon is down because your laptop was getting hot playing House of Cards while also serving up Communist Manifesto 2017e so you shut it off, some peer of yours will (hopefully) have a copy and can share it with your latest Commie comrade.

Alas, like BitTorrent, you can't monetize this shit. You can't gatekeep the PDF version of the Communist Manifesto 2017e and tell people to fork over some change just to read you rambles.

This lack of monetizability is going to hold IPFS back just like BitTorrent and Napster were kept outside the mainstream by the moneybags who control the world now.

So, unless IPFS builds a killer app which literally no one can live without, it will become another arrow in the quiver of p2p aficionados but of little relevance to the wider world.