
Dcentralized url shortening service base on IPFS - facert
http://t.bdaily.club/
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emerongi
So these various IPFS services are getting pushed to the front page of HN just
because they use IPFS?

Honestly, in most cases I do not see a use for decentralizing. In this case,
the shortened URL still depends on a central host (bdaily.club or whatever).
Whether the underlying link is stored in a decentralized manner is completely
meaningless, because all the links will still be broken once the host is gone.

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infogulch
That's the thing though, since it's decentralized you could create a new
service, e.g. bdaily.horse, and just change the domain of all the links: the
short url paths and full url targets are persevered. Not saying it would be
trivial to fix but it's _possible_ , which is a good deal better than today.

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facert
At present, this version does have some problems and doubts, such as
[http://t.bdaily.club/ek5wz](http://t.bdaily.club/ek5wz) This link also jump
to the centralized service. If you use the long address of ipfs directly,
[https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmT2AKLygsgMa6r2AvxiJP31JTqSMMK...](https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmT2AKLygsgMa6r2AvxiJP31JTqSMMKCVK4FHKXiTCX3bR),
the decentralization problem is solved, but the link is too long. there are
some solutions (1) shortening the domain name address (2) with a blockchain
(such as IOTA), mapping the short address and the hash address.

This service is just an attempt on IPFS, I hope to have this service inspired,
then there will be a more usable, more robust app on IPFS.

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abhinai
Can someone please explain to me why this is cool? What are the benefits of
using a decentralized url shortening service?

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duskwuff
And on top of that: what practical applications does a URL shortener have
nowadays? There was a time when they were pretty popular for posting links on
Twitter, but Twitter made t.co an automatic part of their service in 2010.

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EugeneOZ
When you need to publish some huge URL without copy-paste tools (paper,
documents, phone call).

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dangero
As far as I know, IPFS is not really decentralized. Some people say it is if
others pin your files, but there are no guarantees that anyone will do that.
I’ve worked with startups who asked me to use IPFS and this is what it looks
like: setting up an ipfs server to store files on a cloud provider, adding
extras for redundancy plus a file backup system. At present it’s sufficiently
more complex than rolling out S3 + glacier backups with no tangible benefit
besides “decentralized” cred

It’s possible this will change via Filecoin or others, but at present the term
“decentralized” is misused here.

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koalalorenzo
I agree but I also disagree. I think there is always a line of confusion
between distributed and decentralised.

The Protocol is decentralised, then the users/services can decide how to
replicate the files. If everybody will have the same files, it will be 100%
distributed.

We can argue that Bitcoin with SPV clients is just decentralised and not
distributed as well.

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dewlinedew
I don't agree to that

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vishnu_ks
The implementation is neat. But I honestly don't get the point of this site.
The shortened URL is of the form
[http://t.bdaily.club/34fe6](http://t.bdaily.club/34fe6).

When you open [http://t.bdaily.club/34fe6](http://t.bdaily.club/34fe6) the
server redirects you to a file in IPFS which has a javascript script tag to
redirect further to the actual URL.

My question?

* What's the point of this service when you can directly redirect to the actual URL instead of redirecting to the IPFS file?

* Users can also alternatively share the IPFS file directly (eg [https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmfFs8v6hXK258ov9bXGuqzUVsJ...](https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmfFs8v6hXK258ov9bXGuqzUVsJGRPChviuuUXUY6axTQz)). But the problem is IPFS URL/hash is bigger than the urls itself in most cases. I think the point of URL shortner is to have a small URL. This is more like a URL enlarger service.

* Most importantly someone has to seed the IPFS files so that the links keep working. What's the incentive for the website owners to seed the files for free? There is no guarentee that the URLs will work if someone open it after a month or year.

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sauravt
I think it might be a good place to plug my decentralized url shortener (based
on ethereum blockchain) [https://0x.now.sh](https://0x.now.sh)

