Brave has just taken a step towards supporting a decentralized web, by becoming the first browser to offer native integration with a point-to-point network protocol that aims to fundamentally change the functioning of the internet. The technology is called IPFS (which stands for InterPlanetary File System), a relatively obscure transport protocol that promises to improve the dominant HTTP standard by making content faster to access and more resistant to failure and control.
This TechCrunch provides a good overview of how the protocol works. But here’s the short version: while HTTP is designed for browsers to access information on central servers, IPFS accesses it over a network of distributed nodes. Vice compares this to downloading content via BitTorrent, rather than from a central server. You type in a web address normally, and the network is able to find the nodes that store the content you want.
The benefits of the new approach include faster speeds, because data can be distributed and stored closer to the people who access it, as well as lower server costs for the original content publisher. But perhaps most importantly, IPFS has the potential to make web content much more resilient to failure and resistant to censorship.
Brave, which currently has 24 million active users per month, has been one of the first to support IPFS, working on the standard since 2018. But with version 1.19 of the Brave browser released today, Brave users will be able to access the IPFS content directly resolving URIs that start with ipfs: //. They can also choose to install a “one click full IPFS node”, making their browser a node on the peer-to-peer network.
“IPFS offers users a solution to the problem of centralized servers, creating a central point of failure for access to content,” said Brave CTO Brian Bondy in a statement, adding that this gives Brave users ” the power to serve content seamlessly to millions of new users around the world through a new, secure protocol. “
Molly Mackinlay, leader of the IPFS project, adds that enabling IPFS for the decentralized web can overcome the “systemic data censorship” of governments and Big Tech. “Today, web users worldwide are unable to access restricted content, including, for example, parts of Wikipedia in Thailand, more than 100,000 blocked sites in Turkey and critical access to COVID-19 information in China,” says Mackinlay , “Now anyone with an Internet connection can access this critical information through IPFS in the Brave browser. “
This effort to make web content more resilient and unrestricted comes at a time when service and platform owners face difficult choices about which content to stay online. After the Capitol riots, President Trump was silenced on Facebook and Twitter, followed by the Parler app being pulled from Google and Apple app stores and Amazon withdrawing its centralized services from the web. A decentralized web enabled, in part, by IPFS would make this type of control more difficult in the future.