# IPFS 48 Hacker News commenters recommended IPFS and 65 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 5 years (3 owners). **Verdict:** Recommended for content-addressed, censorship-resistant file distribution that stays available when the original server is down. Main caveat: poor maintenance and funding, with little use for business-critical storage. ## Why people recommend it - Content-addressed, verifiable file storage (4 comments): "Content-addressable decentralized storage -- not tied to a cryptocurrency -- is really valuable for censorship-resistant archiving" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49423987)) "content addressed storage with cryptographic (not in a crypo coin way) names makes a lot of sense" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49424257)) "What makes systems like content-addressed storage (e.g., IPFS/IPLD) powerful" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46884377)) - Decentralized alternative to HTTP hosting (4 comments): "tracker/ad/algorithm free static site on the status quo of http, or something newer like IPFS, is worlds better" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47882951)) "That feels more distributed than the sorts of HTTP servers mentioned in TFA." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48584026)) "IPFS is a much better fit for the purpose when you dig into the details" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425692)) - Censorship resistant without a central server (2 comments): "Content-addressable decentralized storage -- not tied to a cryptocurrency -- is really valuable for censorship-resistant archiving" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49423987)) "Censorship resistant in the same sense that bittorrent is, with no single centralized server or domain registration to target." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425923)) - Files stay available if origin fails (2 comments): "That way others can download them and keep them available even if your server is down" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49407635)) "It's just static content, so it has sense to be distributed between nodes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46498254)) ## What people warn about - Hard to sustain without funding (2 comments): "Being economically non-viable without grants is one way that anti-censorship technology is ineffective at its stated goal." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49424051)) "I like IPFS but decentralized storage is just awfully expensive to maintain without any reward." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46498416)) - Poor maintenance and unclear ownership (3 comments): "IPFS could do it but IPFS has been very very poorly maintained." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50308402)) "A grant to an individual maintainer is not the same as a named owner with commit rights and a release process." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425358)) "I'm not sure where IPFS went wrong, but I think our web will continue to degrade until we figure it out." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49501412)) - Slow and unreliable downloads (3 comments): "IPFS in my limited experience is slow but reliable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48455027)) "It was also pretty slow (download rate wise), even if the destination and source node had a good link between them." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425761)) "I clicked an IPFS link years ago, it loaded for a long time and never actually loaded anything" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46227102)) - Has not displaced cloud storage (2 comments): "nobody uses IPFS for anything business critical since it's not all that great at doing things that you need from file storage systems" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49424498)) "sounds a lot like things like IPFS, which have also completely failed to displace either cloud storage or buying a bunch of disks" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50012786)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Arweave](https://hackerapproved.com/p/arweave.md): 9 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "IPFS", https://hackerapproved.com/p/ipfs/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).