Skip to main content

What is Estuary?

Estuary is an open source software that allows easy sending of public data to the Filecoin network that can be retrieved from anywhere.

Why does Estuary exist?

The Outercore Engineering team that helped make Filecoin wanted to provide an end-to-end example of how to use IPFS, Filecoin, and other technologies together.

Read our FAQ for more frequently asked questions and criticism.

How do you make Filecoin storage deals?

alt text

All data is currently uploaded to our hosted Estuary Node (Written in Go) in North America. Filecoin deals are made immediately against miners listed on our index. When a file is uploaded:

  1. A proposal receipt is provided.
  2. The deal machine will continue to make deals until 6 storage deals are sealed on the Filecoin Network with 6 different storage providers. The location is variable.
  3. Each deal is proposed for at least a year (in fil-epochs), and is a verified client deal.
  4. For each successful deal, a Filecoin storage deal receipt is provided with duration and miner information.

How does Estuary use the Filecoin Network and IPFS protocol?

The setup of our node has parts for those who operate IPFS nodes.

  • LibP2P protocols and modules for identity, establishing secure and multiplexed connections between peers, and so much more.
  • go-libp2p-connmgr, a package to help manage connections in go-libp2p.
  • go-ipfs-blockstore a thin wrapper over a datastore, giving a clean interface for Getting and Putting block objects.
  • go-libp2p-kad-dht. A Kademlia DHT implementation on go-libp2p.
  • go-bitswap to acquire blocks requested by the client from the network and to judiciously send blocks in its possession to other peers who want them.

Then we added:

  • Lotus-gateway - we use a small portion of Lotus, to read information about the chain and publish messages.
  • Filclient - a new standalone client library for interacting with the Filecoin storage network.
  • Filecoin wallet for automation and escrow funds.
  • Automated replication till 6 deals are active and on chain. The value is configurable.
  • Deal estimation with USD cost estimation.
  • Automated Filecoin retrieval if the CID is no longer pinned.
  • Bandwidth tracking.
  • Miner logs and performance tracking.
  • Deal lookup by ID and CID.

Not enough? Read the source code.

How does Estuary handle retrieval deals?

Given any given person, let us imagine they made a request for their data. As an example: cid:Qmch2cHCE4WXV32vyaLgWXYqE7VSLYwrT7xJ6tpxqq3NP5.

Case A

  • That data is already pinned to an IPFS/Estuary node.
  • The CID is served back to the requester immediately.

Case B

  • That data is not pinned to an IPFS/Estuary node
  • The Estuary node makes a retrieval deal against a Filecoin miner using FIL it has in escrow.
  • Once the retrieval deal is successful, that data is pinned to the node.
  • The CID is served back to the requester.

Still confusing? Check out the source code.

Who is a Storage Provider

alt text

Storage providers are the heart of the Filecoin network. They earn Filecoin by storing data for clients and computing cryptographic proofs to verify storage over time. The more storage a provider contributes to the network, the higher their chances of earning transaction fees and block rewards. Learn more about how providing storage works. You can apply to be a storage provider here.

People are making deals against my system, where are the logs?

I am a developer, how do I start?

Get API access.