The team at Interplanetary Shipyard maintains a core suite of mission-critical IPFS implementations, including kubo (https://github.com/ipfs/kubo) , boxo (https://github.com/ipfs/boxo), IPFS Cluster (https://ipfscluster.io), IPFS Desktop (https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop), IPFS Companion (https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-companion), and Helia (https://github.com/ipfs/helia).

These implementations are widely used to enable decentralized hosting and retrieval of data in the peer-to-peer space in general, as well as blockchains, and certainly Ethereum as well as it’s L2s and other EVM chains.

These tools power over 11M weekly users, 250K public p2p nodes, the dweb.link and ipfs.io gateways which serve 900M requests/wk and use cases such as:

1. Off-chain storage. IPFS provides verifiable, off-chain storage, often used to reduce on-chain needs in Ethereum & Optimism. Examples: TrueBlocks (local IPFS-based index for EVM chains, built with grants from OP & EF), Snapshot (IPFS-based off-chain voting), thirdweb’s SDK and development framework, Solidity references smart contract metadata via IPFS CIDs, Sourcify uses IPFS to validate and gives transparency around smart contracts.

2. Go-to distribution network for fully decentralized third-party app frontends (for gaming, DeFi, & more). Many popular protocols leverage IPFS-based frontends like Uniswap, Aave, Curve, Synthetix, Liquity (and that’s just in DeFi!). Over 90% of ENS addresses that point to content leverage IPFS. These implementations also enable native support in browsers like Brave and extensions and Javascript tooling for other browsers like Chromium and Firefox.

3. NFT metadata gold standard. Over 115M NFTs are stored on IPFS, including leading platforms OpenSea, Rarible, and Zora

Through this Gitcoin grant application, we seek to continue our work, further develop our offerings, and sustain the momentum needed to drive forward the next wave of innovation in decentralized data management.