Verifiable Decentralized IPFS Cluster: Unlocking Trustworthy Data Permanency for Off-Chain Storage

TL;DR

The paper addresses the trust and verifiability gaps in IPFS pinning for DApps by introducing Verifiable Decentralized IPFS Clusters (VDICs) that integrate Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), Verifiable Credentials (VCs), and Linked Verifiable Presentations to enable verifiable data permanency. Its architecture combines a public Trusted Actor Registry, VC-based Gateway authentication, and decentralized IPFS Clusters to guarantee off-chain storage with transparent verification. Through implementation details and performance evaluation, VDICs are shown to be competitive with traditional pinning services, and a real-world Supply Chain Data Management use case demonstrates practical applicability. The work advances trustworthy, privacy-conscious off-chain storage for DApps without relying on financial incentives, promoting transparency and resilience in data permanency guarantees.

Abstract

In Decentralized Applications, off-chain storage solutions such as the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) are crucial in overcoming Blockchain storage limitations. However, the assurance of data permanency in IPFS relies on the pinning of data, which comes with trust issues and potential single points of failure. This paper introduces Verifiable Decentralized IPFS Clusters (VDICs) to enhance off-chain storage reliability with verifiable data permanency guarantees. VDICs leverage Decentralized Identifier, Verifiable Credentials, and IPFS Clusters to create a trustworthy ecosystem where the storage of pinned data is transparent and verifiable. Performance evaluations demonstrate that VDICs are competitive with traditional pinning services. Real-life use cases validate their feasibility and practicality for providers of Decentralized Applications focused on ensuring data permanency.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Interplay between actors (leaders, node operators, DApps, and DApp users) and architectural components of VDICs (Trusted Actor Registry, Gateway, and IPFS Cluster)
• Figure 2: Relationships between actors of VDICs and the four general motives for node operation: data availability (stakeholder 1), support of DApps using VDICs as off-chain storage (stakeholder 2), support of users relying on services provided by DApps using VDICs (stakeholder 3), and provision of DApps using VDICs as data sources (leader and stakeholder 4)
• Figure 3: Adding node operators to VDICs
• Figure 4: Reading data in VDICs
• Figure 5: Average read performance for a 100 KB file from VDICs with varying number of nodes compared to pinning services: Pinata and Moralis