Today we are excited to introduce NFT.Storage, a service backed by Protocol Labs and Pinata specifically for storing NFT data. NFT.Storage allows developers to protect their NFT assets and associated metadata through content addressing and decentralized storage – ensuring that all NFTs follow best practices to stay accessible long-term.
What is NFT.Storage
NFT.Storage lets developers store NFT data on decentralized networks easily, securely, and for free! With just a few lines of code, anyone can leverage the power of IPFS and Filecoin to ensure the persistence of their NFTs.
Here’s how it works:
Content Addressing: Once users upload data on NFT.Storage, they receive an IPFS hash of the content, known as a CID. CIDs are unique fingerprints of the data, universal addresses that can be used to reference the content regardless of how and where it is stored. Since CIDs are generated from the content itself, using CIDs to reference NFT data prevents problems like fragile links and “rug pulls”.
Provable Storage: NFT.Storage uses Filecoin for long-term decentralized data storage - brokering storage and retrieval deals to preserve NFT data long-term. Filecoin provides a permanence layer using cryptographic proofs to ensure the durability and persistence of the NFT data over time.
Resilient Retrieval: This data stored via IPFS and Filecoin can be fetched directly in the browser via any public IPFS gateway.
What’s next?
NFT.Storage fills the gap for NFT developers today who are looking for easy APIs and best practices for storing their NFT data securely and resiliently. But it’s just the first step in bringing fully decentralized resilience to humanity’s cultural legacy!
Prominent projects like Palm, VideoCoin, and many NFT marketplaces already power their NFT networks with IPFS and Filecoin, and we’re excited to continue evolving our tools and best practices for community data preservation over time.
To be one of the early participants in NFT.Storage and start storing your NFT data securely for free today, visit https://nft.storage.
Got questions or want to contribute to the project? Check out the Github https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard...
This is so useful. I've noticed in the ecosystem that a lot of NFT art houses have been storing the NFT metadata in a plethora of ways. Developers and artists never had a sense of security they were doing things the right way. It is so refreshing to see a service like this launch to the public and provide that security. Huge kudos to the team!
Great work! this is the best tool to make NFTs!
Other services just rely on IPFS nodes which can go down and the NFT content can be lost, which can affect (likely destroy) the value of the NFT.
On the contrary nft.storage relies both on IPFS and Filecoin, by storing the NFT also on Filecoin the NFT can theoretically live forever and preserve its value as it's being stored on highly incentivized miners that are greatly penalized if they lose the content.
Thanks for putting in the effort 🙏
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I don't get it what is there to store, the nft is already on my wallet, the metadata too, what is a real example of this
@cryptogrogu1338 Great answer on Twitter from @PolyPixelCrypto - "Some NFTs come with external data: images, 3D models, videos, etc. Storing this data on-chain is infeasible due to the size of the data (e.g. 1-100MB), so IPFS provides a P2P approach to store data off-chain, in a decentralized way. Also: some metadata is off-chain as well!"
Congrats on the launch ?makers! So in theory, you'd be able to share your NFTs via NFT storage to a device that can display them like Infinite Objects ?
According to the terms https://nft.storage/terms/ the files are only stored on Filecoin testnet, so this is really just for testing. Sure it's easy to use the API to store and retrieve, but the permanence or Filecoin backed storage isn't real.
Ultimately, products would still need to implement their own IPFS/Filecoin setup. You could use anything, even local storage or Amazon S3 temporarily. I guess the only difference is getting the CID back so you can work with IPFS direction in the testing.
Am I missing something? Otherwise it's too good to be true. Free Filecoin uploads to the mainnet? Doesn't look like it.
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@art_chang Actually, yes: Free Filecoin uploads to the mainnet! It's not just for testing and multiple NFT marketplaces are using it in production already.
That's possible, because Protocol Labs believes that NFTs as part of our cultural commons is worth preserving. Further down the line, the idea is that nft.storage will be a fully decentralized service. In the mean time, if you are working with NFTs, nft.storage is all you need indeed.
@atopal This is interesting. We are planning on implementing a new feature that allows users to both store, send and potentially mint their art (mostly photos at the moment). We're going to be using IPFS to send/store (with additional E2EE features), as well as ultimately mint into a NFT. But we are thinking of:
1. Rolling our own implementation to send through IPFS and long term storage through Filecoin
2. Using NFT.storage
But without knowing more about NFT.storage, we're not sure if we can rely on that as a long term solution other than for quick prototyping.
@atopal I guess this is the section that's kind of cryptic to me: https://nft.storage/terms/#filec...
It says
> Data may also be stored in Filecoin but the time, duration, and number of deals are not guaranteed.
Then I guess I misinterpreted this, but sometimes the deals are on testnet?
> Deals may be made with Filecoin nodes operating on test network(s) (i.e. not mainnet).
Is the idea that we shouldn't even worry about Filecoin, and we can trust that nft.storage will just make sure the files are always available through IPFS and the whole filcoin layer shouldn't be a concern?
> It is recommended that you do not rely on Filecoin deals directly and instead you allow nft.storage to make the data available in IPFS.
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I love this and think it will be very useful! Quick question given storage and bandwidth concerns for larger NFT files, do you imagine that this service will remain free until it completely decentralizes itself?
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