jfrazier-eth / decentralized-fs

Decentralized File Storage App POC

decentralized-fs

Decentralized File Storage App POC Requirements

• Users can upload files from their device
• Files stored publicly on IPFS or Arweave
• List of all file names uploaded via app tracked server-side
• Users can view list of all previously uploaded public files
• Users can download previously uploaded public files

Implementation

The user uploads a file in the UI. The uploaded file is then sent to the server that pays for the transaction and uploads the file to the arweave network. The server stores the transaction id, name of the file, and user that uploaded the file so that the user can view a list of files they have uploaded and download their files from the arweave network.

Future Work

• Remove centralized payments - We currently pay for all user uploads, this is not ideal from the persepective of a potential revenue generating application, or from the perspective of a user that wants a decentralized cloud file system. An alternative that optimizes for UX while providing the user with a permanent file system, is to manage user wallets in the application, require the user to pay a monthly subscription that gives them X GB of upload storage per month, and upload files to the arweave network and pay for transactions within their browser.
• Support indexing and ability to choose your UI provider - If we change the application such that each user has their own wallet, then we can remove the need to store ownership and other file metadata in a centralized server. To accomplish this, the user could upload a metadata file and the associated target file to arweave. Indexers could then process only the user's transactions (determining ownership by the sender), and join the metadata with the target file to create a clean user interface without vendor lock.

Running Locally

• yarn - install dependencies
• docker-compose up - start the postgres instance
• Create a .env file with a DATABASE_URL and ARWEAVE_KEY
  • DATABASE_URL - if you're using the docker postgres instance you can set it to postgresql://postgres:password@127.0.0.1:5432/postgres?schema=public.
  • ARWEAVE_KEY - base64 encoded arweave jwt. In order to upload files the key needs to have funds.
• yarn be:dev - start the server (it will automatically run migrations on your postgres database)
• yarn web:dev - start the NextJS server
• Visit http://localhost:3000 to view the UI