The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) maintenance team at Shipyard will wind down engineering work, maintenance, and infrastructure management on September 30, after Protocol Labs declined to renew its funding.
The loss of funding will leave projects like Kubo, Helia, Boxo, Rainbow, IPFS Desktop, and IPFS Companion without a dedicated maintenance team, Shipyard said in a blog post on Monday.
IPFS is an open-source protocol for storing and sharing data in peer-to-peer networks. Protocol Labs is the research and engineering organization that created IPFS and Filecoin — a blockchain network for incentivizing decentralized data storage.
The engineering team will cease maintenance of public infrastructure, including ipfs.io, dweb.link, delegated-ipfs.dev, and IPFS bootstrap nodes. According to Shipyard, Protocol Labs owns the relevant domains and infrastructure and will determine their future.
IPFS is not shutting down, but Shipyard winding down operations will leave many popular implementations and services without ongoing maintenance unless other developers take them over.
Protocol Labs Head of Engineering and Research, Molly Mackinley, said in a discussion on an online forum that IPFS will transition to "more lightweight maintenance" through IPFS Foundation grants to individual maintainer developers. She added that development will continue on decentralized public infrastructure.
Shipyard emerged in 2024 as an independent team of experienced IPFS developers who previously worked at Protocol Labs.
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