A separate “internet” site that cannot be hacked or destroyed or blocked by regimes? Which also causes hardly any costs, is something like that even possible?
What one can only dream of in WEB2, our usual Internet, has long been state of the art in the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) of WEB3. And the IPFS is a completely new design and not an Internet with a few improvements.
A few comparisons should make this clear: WEB2 has developed over a long time into today's central network, which meets many needs but also increasingly shows weaknesses. Static websites that are created with HTML knowledge are disappearing in favor of dynamic presences using complex CMS (content management systems), which can better attract and capture the attention of visitors with their effects and functions. For comparison, the first websites I created consisted of maybe 10 files. The Tenckhoff photo archive is currently presented on the Internet using the CMS Drupal and currently contains 74,660 files that are hosted centrally on a server and can be accessed under a fixed IP address. Even though the professional Drupal CMS is one of the most secure systems, centralization is a weak point, as shown by around 100 attacks per day on my server from different countries around the world, and the Tenckhoff photo archive is of course of less importance than, for example, the large company websites Companies and Institutions. In addition, regimes around the world have an easy time blocking the central websites of inconvenient citizens or entire countries, etc.
The WEB3, which is based on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), solves this problem elegantly using the mathematical construct of Merkle trees, which leads to a completely decentralized structure. Files that are added to the IPFS, which is reached via so-called gateways (e.g. https://ipfs.io/ipfs/...), are distributed across many different "nodes" that now exist all over the world. If a node goes offline, e.g. due to a hacker attack or simply a power outage, the file is still available on many other nodes (servers). This circumstance is of course ideal for WEB3 presences, which can be created using HTML/CSS techniques and loaded into the IPFS. This creates an HTML page for WEB3 that is distributed decentrally across nodes and can no longer be destroyed by hackers or blocked by regimes.
For example, the IPFS is also used to create a mirror of the Wikipedia projects in order to give people in repressive regimes unhindered access to their genuine content.
Another special feature is the uniqueness of the HTML/CSS files and images, because these are now stored based on their hash value (and not based on their file name). This is the result of a complex mathematical operation with the number and sequence of all bits in the original file - a change to the original file will inevitably lead to a change in this hash value and it would no longer contribute to the Web3 presence. Bad cards for hackers who want to inject their criminal code! A Web3 page is represented in IPFS using a long sequence of characters. The example page of the Tenckhoff photo archive consists of these files:
- about.html
- fat.css
- favicon
- frontage.webp
- index.html
- privacy.html
- red-tori.webp.html.
These would form a “normal” HTML page on the Internet.
The files are located in a folder called pat and can now be added to the IPFS using various methods. On an IPFS node they are then available as follows:
QmPAHuKTEKYL9Pw8cdU9HFMZVFSPB1ShNy4K3AdMERVcxe pat/about.html
QmVr1zcCGAzJSEzt7x8buHuYzzMAfocQ88XnJQm9zKrjFa pat/fat.css
QmcNrNBmW7o5i9XBWf8Jqj5HyLufpXXnHqvaMQCvbcmJqH pat/favicon.ico
QmRYY7qWZxXMHgVMoSCwNDETKrd4ZSeq1sQdfBGAP7qwzT pat/frontpage.webp
QmVQBshCGGRnyN7q681SUUDg8cPpmoU5BKdAtG9ykiGePQ pat/index.html
QmctsCZTng5C28xH9vLRrZa3SM6kM1i3oGCxhSuoXnJdYt pat/privacy.html
QmenLVXAko73gds61JpgpeCLpmXohtDe546PeKk45JAtPb pat/red-trori.webp
QmexsSbrW4PxV4Vp2W55Zq1dZCvtgPNArYe2hTLYYqwZ6c pat
Now all files are stored and accessible under their unchangeable hash value in IPFS and, since they are in the pat folder with the unique hash value QmexsSbrW4PxV4Vp2W55Zq1dZCvtgPNArYe2hTLYYqwZ6, which is derived from all the files in it, our WEB3 site can now also be stored under the hash value of pat be called:
https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmexsSbrW4PxV4Vp2W55Zq1dZCvtgPNArYe2hTLYYqwZ6c/
However, this only works in this form as long as no files in the pat folder have changed or additional files have been added to the folder. Then the hash value of the pat folder will also change and it will no longer be able to be found at the above address in WEB 3. In order to be able to further develop and supplement WEB3 pages, there is, analogous to the Internet, a Domain Name System (DNS) in WEB3, which is called IPNS (InterPlanetary Name System). Here you get a unique address that points to the pat folder. If this changes, the assignment in the IPNS remains intact. For the example page of the Tenckhoff photo archive, the entry in the IPNS is, for example:
https://ipfs.io/ipns/k2k4r8nhjfot9nkidj6vdj09lvv2y47t1bzoyr83vybhg2fl2okw2205/
This remains intact even if new files have been added to the WEB3 website, the image has been replaced or text has been changed.
But you can hardly remember the long character strings. It helps, for example, to simply redirect an existing subdomain in WEB2 to the WEB3 page.
This is how you can get to our WEB3 example page
The IPFS, which is of course also used for the images and symbols of Non-fungible Tokens (NFT), is an excellent evolutionary leap that solves many of the problems of the current WEB2. There probably won't be any complex CMS here in the foreseeable future, but who knows how this new technology will develop further. If you think of the BTX in the 80s as an entry into the Internet world with colorful ASCII characters, with its speed of 1200 bit/s in download and 75 bit/s in upload, then IPFS will be with us in the coming years with many more Evolutionary leaps surprise. The mathematical foundations of IPFS are clearly capable of this.
