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There appear to be 2 two substrate forks addressing offchain data storage with a IPFS backend:

As best I can tell (very new here so could be wrong) they take 2 different approaches: Pallet vs chain extension.

  1. What are the relative merits of each approach to implementing IPFS: pallet vs extension chain?
  2. Which is more likely to land upstream?
  3. Is it possible to track/estimate the time frame in which these might land upstream?

This is not the question: what are the ways to store offchain data

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  • The implementation on how to store offchain data is maintainer's responsibility. These solutions will not land into core substrate repo.
    – Mrisho Lukamba
    Oct 18, 2022 at 18:07
  • Offchain data can be stored in offchain storage. Those forks are custom implementation. I think the question could be more clear if you asked what are the ways to store offchain data and i believe there are answers already
    – Mrisho Lukamba
    Oct 18, 2022 at 18:09
  • > These solutions will not land into core substrate repo. New here... are you a member of the core team?
    – Begley Brothers Inc
    Oct 18, 2022 at 20:30
  • am a contributor but these are personal custom implementation. the core team implementation is to use offchain db which is already configured.
    – Mrisho Lukamba
    Oct 18, 2022 at 23:01

2 Answers 2

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  1. Use a pallet
  2. It is unclear. See my comment here for more detail behind this summary:
    • Upstream changes to Substrate are required for native Substrate runtime support of IPFS (things have been tried).
    • Upstream is not resistant
    • Upstream changes won't be easy/quick
    • Web3 Foundation have made two grants related/using IPFS, but not focused on getting IPFS in the native Substrate runtime
    • The Iris grant project completed
    • The offchain_ipfs project review/merge of contributions stalled due to lack of resources
    • Substrate forks proliferate....
  3. No

Update: rs-ipfs is in a state of flux, possibly being archived, with iroh being a new candidate. Performance is impressive (presentation) but it is early days.

Substrate forking seems unavoidable for the foreseeable future, say 12+ months

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The "native" approach uses the off-chain worker(ocw) functionality to interact with IPFS. I'd guess a Substrate pallet for IPFS doesn't exist because each implementation will have its differences and require somewhat of a custom implementation. I think the projects you've linked and discussed are the ones to watch. Maybe search some big parachain projects to see if they have any IPFS ocws.

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