Round 1 / Boost

Boost has significantly transformed the landscape for storage providers on the Filecoin network by decoupling the Filecoin market protocol from the sealing software stack. This has allowed storage providers to manage data onboarding and retrieval more efficiently and flexibly.

1. New deal making protocol focused on using HTTP data transfer protocol for deal data transfer to replace the existing Graphsync protocol.

2. Booster-HTTP: This component operates as a HTTP gateway within the Boost setup. It facilitates the retrieval of data through HTTP protocols, enhancing the flexibility and accessibility for retrieving stored files. Notably, recent updates have moved towards a trustless gateway system, named Frisbii, which does not support the previous unixfs file format. Instead, users needing to handle unixfs formatted files are advised to run an additional binary known as bifrost-gateway. This shift ensures retrieval verifiability by default, aiming to boost the security and reliability of data transactions​​.

3. Booster-Bitswap: This component uses the Bitswap protocol, a block exchange protocol native to IPFS (InterPlanetary File System). It plays a crucial role in connecting IPFS network with Filecoin network by allowing IPFS nodes to directly fetch the data from Filecoin network.

4. IPNI integration: Boost is the original data source for IPNI protocol. It allows SP to publish the list of CIDs they hold and retrieval mechanism which can be used to retrieve the data.