WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND
As far as I know Anytype had used/using IPFS internaly for storage. As far as I noticed you have switched sync protocol since then but it wouldn’t be hard to retain some integration.
HOW COULD IT BE DONE
- (minimum effort) adding support for ipfs:// schema in url’s in the same maner as it is implemented in bookmarks object when fetching web pages to fill bookmark description currently. It could be resolved through predefined ipfs gateways for the sake of simplicity.
- (medium effort) if final version of the product will include some sort of ipfs-node implementation internaly it shouldn’t be hard to pin files already loaded in anytype. As well as referencing and importing already publicly aviable hash into Anytype system.
IPFS network is public by design so you should provide a choise to encrypt the file or sharing it raw and publicly for compatibility with other apps.
If you chose to encrypt it is sane to do it with a single secret key (AES or something like that) and then encrypt this key assymetrically multiple times for each user or space it needs shared to. - (maximum effort) make any existing object shareable through IPFS, it probably not worth it and require too much desing chalenges, only files embeding/pinning should be enough for any usecase
REAL WORLD USE CASES
I use IPFS ocassionaly as an alternative to traditional image hostings to just quickly send screenshot to someone. Currently there are several pinning services that are good for this. I also use diffuse.sh daily as a media player and it works like a charm for bringing my audio-library from NAS and cloud services.
Also there are some archives like wikipedia mirror project and some books indexed and hosted here and there wich all would be nice to reference in the Anytype notes directly with much of a hassle.
RECOMMENDED ALTERNATIVES
IPFS is a well-established project and quite mature to use in broad context, however it’s up to devs how much they would want to use it, but fetching from a public gateway should be no-brainer to implement. Alternative of implementing all the things that IPFS does already of course exist but it wouldn’t be compatible with some software I’m already enjoy and using
ADDITIONAL CONTEXT
There was some old questions considering IPFS in this community but there was no recent clarification of it’s status as an idea. Probably devs should add it to roadmap or make a blog post why they are using it/ how they are using it/why they moving away from it.
Anytype is still listed on IPFS ecosystem site, so it would be nice as well to know on what plans existing on this currently.