Round 1 / Interplanetary Network Indexers

The interplanetary network indexers are a software stack and federated network for indexing and offering content routing on top of the content addressed data stored in filecoin. IPNI is a critical bridge component between filecoin and IPFS, allowing IPFS and more generally users looking for small individual pieces of data to quickly learn which filecoin providers have that data, and which pieces it is contained in. IPNI has contributed software client libraries to boost, contributed to a set of FRC standards for what it means for content on filecoin to be “retrievable”, has played a role in retrieval markets, and has contributed observational data on retrievability of filecoin content.

In the last 6 months, IPNI has migrated from an AWS cloud stack operated primarily by Protocol Labs to a federation of independently operated servers. The previous team that has until 2023 built IPNI within Protocol Labs has volunteered to continue operation of the network service as an independent project. Protocol Labs provided initial funding in order to cover operating expenses, and to cover the costs of migration from the previous cloud infrastructure to bare metal servers.