Today, we want to inform you of a rather large update to the sites main infrastructure we'll be doing over the next few days. While one of our focuses is adding new features, another is ensuring the stability and scalability of the platform. Recently, we've noticed many users have found it overly complicated to upload content using the Web Torrent system, while a small handful have found it straight forward. Another issue we've ran into is the current scalability of the Web Torrent client. While this can be addressed by our team, it would be a set back to our platform if we focused our resources currently into developing a more efficient hybrid WebTorrent client.
For our beta we were planning on adding dual support for WebTorrent and IPFS. Our current research has shown us that IPFS allows out platform to scale better in terms of reliability, and ease of use in all aspects of download, uploading and simply viewing the content. Given this, we've made the decision to currently pursue IPFS as out primary means of site content.
We've already reached out to our primary uploaders and notified of this change and will be actively working with them. During this change, there will be a content purge from the site as we'll be disabling for the time being uploading Web Torrent based content and migrating towards IPFS based content. We want to make it clear, we're not abandoning the use of WebTorrenting but rather postponing its primary use as it's a powerful technology, but will require a lot of time out of us before we can produce a scalable product using it.
What you should expect after our changes is for the site to initially have minimal to no content as our uploaders migrate to the new format and repopulate our index but in terms of benefits you should expect as previously stated increased reliability of content and it'll be far easier to upload/download content. After our infrastructure is back and running to par we can continue our reach into improving the WebTorrent client and re-enable WebTorrent uploading.
Once our primary uploaders are all up to date on our changes, we'll be working with them to put together a guide for "the every day joe" to easily add content to our network which should help us quickly grow. We feel that this update is a great step forward in making PureVidz more accessible to everyone and a good start to our planned major update.
Notice: This change will go into effect on Jan 25th where for a short time frame the site will be unavailable during our maintenance. When it comes back online, it will initially have no content and we'll be working with our uploaders to get everything back online.
Thanks.
Why to toss the WbTorrent stuff which is already there!? What prevents you from just adding the IPFS without removing WebTorrent content, allow users to upload both ways, and make the IPFS the default, if it is easier? I am not sure such drastic moves will be welcome. Torrents need to be there, as they were part of the deal. Don't get me wrong, IPFS may be a great technology, but the word "torrent" attracted people here.
We're not tossing anything. We're advancing our schedule on allowing IPFS based content. As we've stated once this is done, we'll be re-enabling torrent based uploading as we merge the two platforms together.
Sia is the best very very fast decentralized file storage/sharing system with great encryption and thus data neutrality already working with the incentive token out, no need to wait for filecoin. You can do sharing, everything is encrypted, it's the way to go. But maybe I'm missing something good about ipfs.
We'll be looking alternate forms of media once we've secured implementing IPFS and WebTorrents together. The duality of the platform should make it easy when going forward if we want to add any other providers such as Sia as you've pointed out. I'd also emphasize on the response that Tweet has which is IPFS is open source which in other words you can disable the blacklist. Again, IPFS isn't intended to be out only solution as WebTorrenting once we combine the two will likely be our primary source of content for movies/tv where as IPFS will be our primary source of content for personal videos, i.e. vlogs, personal recordings, etc.
On that note, the block list is only enforced directly on gateway.ipfs.io and other gateways that have opted into the block list. It will be possible in your user profile to set your default gateway url for ipfs. Reference by an IPFS dev.