Our Fileverse Portal dApp is an Onchain Collaboration Platform using IPFS, among other technologies. You can use it to store & share files with end-to-end encryption; live collaborate on documents & whiteboards, publish decentralized web pages; and more.

To simplify the search and indexing of files shared via Fileverse Portal, we have built a fast and simple way for people to visualise and find any public IPFS hash directly from the dApp itself. Since it’s an open source and free dApp, we decided to share an initial version with everyone to enjoy even without having to use Fileverse Portal. <3

Some of us here at Fileverse are academics and PhD drop-outs.

In our continuous frustrations with academic research, we realised one extraordinary thing that could help everyone in this space, and we started connecting the dots…

Academic research is often fragmented across journals and servers which happen to either disappear with time, link rot, fragment discussions on the paper, or even have all sorts of conflicting paywalls (we academics often don’t even have a say on the paywalls on our very own papers).

By using Content Addressing (IPFS) you can create one Hash/link to a given paper and ensure that anyone looking for a specific paper to read it, or discuss it, will have the same as every other person. Making access to the paper permanent and all discussions collapsable to that one content Hash.

It’s a very concrete example of our DeSci approach, stay tuned for much more!

HTTP is IP addressed, IPFS is content addressed. Here’s a very neat diagram that explains the differences and why it matters for all of us, end users and explorers of online content: A Practical Explainer for IPFS Gateways - Part 1

Taken from our friends at web3storage : “Content addressing is a technique for organizing and locating data in a system in which the key used to locate content is derived from the content itself, rather than its location.”

You can learn more here with these tutorials on the decentralised web: Content Addressing on the Decentralized Web

Easy. Peasy. Lemon Squeezy. Check this cool example by the Proto School team.

"One of the most important differences between the centralized web and the decentralized web is the way we identify and retrieve data on each. Let's use a simple example to illustrate: Two of your friends, Lars and Courtney, recommend the same book for your cat-loving child, but they describe the book to you in very different ways:

Lars: "Go to the Strand bookstore at 828 Broadway in New York City, take the elevator to the 2nd floor, find the 3rd bookcase on the right in the Children's section, and get the book that's 16 inches from the left on top shelf."

Courtney: "Check out Cutest Kittens Ever by Anna Claybourne. Its ISBN-13 number is 9781682972168."

If your goal is to get a copy of the book, which of these descriptors do you find most helpful? Which gives you the most options for how to acquire the book? In each case, once you've followed the instructions, how confident will you be that you've found the book your friend intended?

One of your friends identified the book by its location, and the other by its content. (Not sure which is which? Hint: We love alliteration almost as much as Lars loves location addressing and Courtney loves content addressing.)

Location addressing points us to the location where data is stored by a specific entity. Lars pointed us to a specific bookshelf controlled by the Strand, where he knows they've previously kept this book, and hopes they continue to offer it there. This is how we identify data on the centralized web.

Content addressing instead provides a unique, content-derived identifier for the data, which we can use to retrieve the data from a variety of sources. We could have used the ISBN provided by Courtney to verify we'd found the right book at our local library, our neighbor's house, or the school book fair. This is how we identify data on the decentralized web.”

The Fileverse Portal private beta is currently in invite-first & allowlist mode, to focus on quality & existing users.

Fileverse Portal is your onchain space for collaboration and productivity. A decentralised alternative to tools like Google Workspace & Notion, but onchain, encrypted, and privacy-enhancing. Use it to write, create a knowledge-base, sketch ideas, share files, make a public webpage and more - individually or as a group.

You can customise your Portal with different plugins (eg. live collaboration on crypto whiteboard & docs; decentralized web pages; permanent storage etc.), enable end-to-end encryption, and leverage wallets to create unique access-tokens (for any content) and share them with your collaborators, friends or onchain community.

See you on Twitter <3