What is the relationship between IPFS and Filecoin?

Filecoin and IPFS are both star projects under the "Protocol Lab", and both are basic protocols for storing and sharing data in the distributed Web. V Awdbank

Both systems are free, open source, and share many components, including data representation format (IPLD) and network communication protocol (libp2p).

Although there is no need to use Filecoin to interact with IPFS, all Filecoin nodes are IPFS nodes behind the scenes, and can use libp2p to connect to other IPFS nodes and obtain data in IPLD format from them.

However, Filecoin nodes do not join or participate in the public IPFS DHT.

Data storage incentives
IPFS allows users to store and transmit verifiable, content-addressed data in a peer-to-peer network. IPFS users keep the required data on their own IPFS nodes, which is called fixation. Sometimes, a third-party fixed service or a single IPFS user group can be used to fix data.

As long as one user stores data and can provide it to other users when requested by other users, the data exists in the network.

IPFS has no built-in mechanism to incentivize data storage, and Filecoin, as the incentive layer of IPFS, hopes to incentivize people to provide distributed storage space through the blockchain.

The Filecoin network has created a distributed storage market for long-term storage, and nodes with large storage capacity can lease storage space to storage users.

The Filecoin network can ensure the safe storage of data, but the process of storing (sealing), verifying (proof) and unsealing (for retrieval) is computationally expensive and will take a long time.

Therefore, Filecoin opens an additional retrieval market in which dedicated nodes can help quickly deliver content from the network for payment by keeping an unsealed cached copy, and this delivery mechanism can be done using IPFS.

Filecoin can be seen as a cold storage layer, ideal for storing large amounts of data safely. IPFS will be a hot storage layer designed to quickly retrieve and distribute content.

Which system should the user choose?

Use IPFS

The user's own node stores the data by itself, otherwise, it must rely on other peers to voluntarily/automatically store data or use centralized fixed services.
The centralized IPFS fixed service must be trusted to complete its work. IPFS has no built-in regulations to verify whether the fixed service stores data and provides the data correctly.
IPFS itself is very suitable for popular content (used with many providers), incentivizing organizations that synchronize and store data on multiple nodes, and organizations that can use strong social contracts to ensure the long-term preservation and maintenance of content.
Using Filecoin
customers to conduct storage transactions with miners to store data, the network verifies whether the miners have stored the data correctly, and regularly pays storage fees during the storage transaction.
Miners who fail to comply with the storage agreement will be punished.
Content retrieval can be provided directly by storage miners, or by specialized retrieval miners. The user requesting the data pays for this service.
Filecoin is good at storing large amounts of data for a long time.
Using the two at the same time
Some solutions combine the best features of the two systems to back up data on the Filecoin network while providing fast data access via the IPFS network. V Awdbank

This ensures that the data is always available and can be retrieved quickly, while also ensuring that the data is safely backed up on the Filecoin network.

Powergate is a multi-layer file storage API based on Filecoin and IPFS, and is an index generator for Filecoin data.

The technology behind IPFS and Filecoin

Filecoin and IPFS use the same technology on many levels:

The Intellectual Property Alliance specifies the data format of content-addressed data, such as how blockchain or IPFS stores files.
libp2p provides peer-to-peer network functions, connection security, and key discovery and data distribution functions, such as DHT and Pubsub.
Multiple formats define future-oriented identifiers and data types.
Graph synchronization and Bitswap support fast and efficient IPLD data transmission between nodes.

It can be seen that IPFS is also a star project of the protocol laboratory, as a cutting-edge decentralized storage network underlying protocol, which has been researched and applied by Huawei, JD.com, and SVA. V Awdbank

Currently, there are hundreds of applications running on the IPFS public network, and many traditional large Internet companies use IPFS for storage.

After more than 3 years of long-distance research and development of Filecoin, the mainnet has also been officially launched on October 15, 2020.

As the undisputed leading project on the distributed storage track, with the smooth operation of the Filecoin mainnet, applications and ecology based on Filecoin and IPFS networks will gradually be established in the future, and the long-term value of Filecoin will gradually appear.