The Brave web browser, which is focused on privacy, has supported the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) since version 1. 19. Resources in IPFS can be opened via an external HTTP gateway or via a local IPFS node that the browser starts as required in order to participate in the network.

The latter in particular is a unique selling point among popular browsers. Opera for Android has support for IPFS, but can only display IPFS content via the gateways mentioned. In principle, every normal browser can do this – albeit less comfortably. There are plug-ins for Firefox and Chromium browsers, but they do not replace a local node or, as with Brave, an integrated node in the browser.

Interplanetary file system IPFS is a “peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol” and aims to replace HTTP (the “Hypertext Transfer Protocol”) in the long term. Unlike HTTP, IPFS does not rely on a client-server architecture, but distributes data to all participating nodes. Similar to BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer protocols (P2P), it is, among other things, significantly more fail-safe and censorship-resistant than the classic web.

Resources can can be accessed in IPFS by operating your own node, similar to a P2P client. Instead of URLs that indicate where a file can be found – and can point to nothing – IPFS uses content-based addressing: files are identified by their content and not their location. Via URI schemes like ipfs: // or ipns: // the data can be called up and also refer to each other. Among other things, complete websites can be created in IPFS without having one (or more) dedicated servers delivering them.

Complicated detailed questions The full integration of IPFS in a browser is not trivial. Content addressing requires adjustments to security measures such as the same-origin policy, and both the storage of data in your own IPFS node and the use of HTTP gateways require special data protection considerations. In the first case you are an active participant in a P2P network, in the second case gateway operators like Cloudflare see the network traffic to have. There they also provide information about further plans: Among other things, Brave’s mobile browser should receive support for IPFS, the browser should learn to address IPFS content via DNS records and users should be able to publish their own websites in IPFS via Brave.

(syt)