Brave Adds Integrated IPFS

In a bid to make the web faster, safer, and more open, Brave has integrated IPFS capabilities into its Chromium-based web browser.

We’re thrilled to be the first browser to offer a native IPFS integration with today’s Brave desktop browser release,” Brave CTO Brian Bondy said in a prepared statement. “Providing Brave’s 1 million+ verified content creators with the power to seamlessly serve content to millions of new users across the globe via a new and secure protocol, IPFS gives users a solution to the problem of centralized servers creating a central point of failure for content access. IPFS’ innovative content addressing uses Content Identifiers (CIDs) to form an address based on the content itself as opposed to locating data based on the address of a server. Integrating the IPFS open-source network is a key milestone in making the Web more transparent, decentralized, and resilient.”

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IPFS, which stands for “interplanetary file system,” is described as a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol designed to make the web faster, safer, and more open. It provides a cryptographic hash to each file and removes duplications across the network. So each time you download a file, the link for that download points to a human-readable version of that hash, and not to a specific URL.

Brave’s 24 million desktop users can now access IPFS-hosted content directly from the address bar or by or installing a full IPFS node. “When installing a full node, this will allow Brave users to load content over IPFS’ p2p network, hosted on their own node,” Brave notes. “Integrating IPFS provides Brave users with a significantly enhanced browsing experience, increasing the availability of content, offloading server costs from the content publisher, and improving the overall resilience of the Internet.”

You can learn more in this YouTube video. You can download Brave from the Brave website.

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Conversation 13 comments

  • longhorn

    19 January, 2021 - 1:58 pm

    <p>Mozilla went totalitarian. Brave went interplanetary. Brave is the new Mozilla.</p><p><br></p>

  • madthinus

    Premium Member
    19 January, 2021 - 2:31 pm

    <p>Kazaa for the web. </p>

    • IanYates82

      Premium Member
      20 January, 2021 - 4:40 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#608563">In reply to madthinus:</a></em></blockquote><p>Pretty much </p><p><br></p><p>Or to a younger audience, BitTorrent with its DHT mode in use (no need for trackers, although they still help, much like I suspect IPFS has some index nodes to speed up content discovery and reduce node communication) </p>

  • Daekar

    19 January, 2021 - 2:58 pm

    <p>Yep, this is definitely what we need. In a world where you can get deplatformed at the drop of a hat because a few folks don't like your opinions (been happening to a lot of people and organizations in the past month other than the outgoing President), this is an important step in making sure that minority voices can be heard. </p><p><br></p><p>I hope there will be an extension for Edge. </p>

    • markld

      Premium Member
      19 January, 2021 - 4:39 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#608567">In reply to Daekar:</a></em></blockquote><p>I agree with you, thanks, and yes on an extention for Edge</p>

    • bluvg

      19 January, 2021 - 6:58 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#608567">In reply to Daekar:</a></em></blockquote><p>I agree that free speech is critically important, but free speech has never been unlimited, and we've never had something like the internet and social media. Obviously, we as humans are not yet mature enough to handle it dispassionately and peacefully. We need the social media equivalent to "you can't yell 'fire!' in a theater".</p>

      • pixymisa

        20 January, 2021 - 6:34 am

        <p>That quote "can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater" is from Schenck v. United States, which addressed the issue of burning a draft card in protest during <em>World War I</em>.</p><p><br></p><p>That specific phrase was re-examined in the decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969 (which was not about fires or theaters but was about the First Amendment), and the Supreme Court said very clearly that shouting "fire" in a crowded theater is in fact protected speech.</p><p><br></p><p>You <em>can</em> shout "fire" in a crowded theater in the real world, so why not online?</p>

        • bluvg

          21 January, 2021 - 12:39 am

          <blockquote><em><a href="#608649">In reply to PixyMisa:</a></em></blockquote><p>Fair point, but I meant it in the conceptual sense that free speech is not unlimited, and Schenck v United States established that incitement was not protected. Brandenburg v. Ohio only limited that to imminent threat.</p><p><br></p><p>It's kind of a moot point with social media platforms, though, because they can make and enforce their ToS as they see fit. This isn't about <em>government </em>limiting free speech.</p>

  • bschnatt

    19 January, 2021 - 3:26 pm

    <p>Opera and Unstoppable Domains have their own browsers for this sort of thing, so I'm not sure Brave is the first, unless I'm confusing my protocols. (I'm new to this sort of thing, so I could be wrong…)</p>

  • glenn8878

    19 January, 2021 - 5:38 pm

    <p>I heard many good things about Brave. Not so good about Mozilla/Firefox.</p>

  • kjb434

    Premium Member
    19 January, 2021 - 9:44 pm

    <p>Brave is the real Firefox. The founder is the person ousted out of Mozilla as part of a cancel culture attack.</p><p><br></p><p>I continue to use Edge since I'm not completely sold on some of Brave's features.</p>

    • nerdile

      Premium Member
      25 January, 2021 - 2:58 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#608628">In reply to kjb434:</a></em></blockquote><p>"Cancel culture" is an interesting phenomenon. Why, in my day, all we had were protests, boycotts, and "voting with your dollar". None of this OH WAIT</p>

  • retcable

    Premium Member
    20 January, 2021 - 6:03 am

    <p>I've been using Brave off and on for several months now and have been quite pleased with it. It functions well and I have not had any problems at all. I refuse to use Chrome any more because of Google's privacy and tracking habits. </p>

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