IPFS, the InterPlanetary File System

IPFS, or InterPlanetary File System, was founded by Juan Benet in 2014. Benet published a draft of a white paper describing a “peer-to-peer distributed file system that seeks to connect all computing devices with the same system of files.” That same year, Benet also founded Protocol Labs, a research lab for network protocols and the umbrella company behind IPFS, and applied to join the prestigious startup incubator Y Combinator, which accepted the Protocol Labs team into its summer 2014 cohort.

According to Benet, IPFS’ original name was intended to be Global File System, but that name was taken. Benet ultimately settled on InterPlanetary File System as an homage to Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider, an American computer scientist who first imagined the Intergalactic Computer Network, which laid out the conceptual framework of what we now know as the modern Internet.