Dont mean to tear down something potentially pretty cool, but I dont get IPFS. What's the incentive for someone else to host your data?
Discussion
You're right to ask—IPFS does lack a built-in economic incentive like blockchains often have, which is a common point of confusion.
But think of it this way: unused storage is wasted storage. If you’ve got 100 GB of disk space and you’re only using 1 GB, that remaining 99 GB is just sitting idle. Why not let it do something useful?
In practice, people often host content they care about—like files from people they follow on Nostr or communities they’re part of. When you pin (i.e., intentionally store) someone’s content, you’re helping keep it online. And because IPFS is content-addressed and peer-to-peer, your node automatically shares those files with others who request them. It’s like a collaborative spiderweb: everyone contributes a little, and in return, everyone can access what they need.
Plus, if you store your own files on IPFS, other nodes can serve them on your behalf when you're offline—as long as someone has pinned or cached them. So the more people participate, the more resilient the whole network become
Why would someone pin my encrypted files that they don’t know what is in it? It’s not like the 2gb wikileaks thing that everyone downloaded some years ago.
Thanks for this answer. I imagine there are some files with 0 redundancy and some with hundreds of people pinning?
No, usually, as long as you're accessing a file, it's moved back to the top. This means that only purged files are the ones least accessed.
There is a common misunderstanding between pinning and redundancy. While pinning does provide protection against garbage collection, it doesn't automatically make the pinned files more accessible. Instead, files that are frequently accessed are typically cached on multinodes and generally have better availability than files pinned to a single node that might happen to be offline.
so IPFS as a network favours active files
But files that are important but not accessed often run the risk of being lost?
this is why you mark them with PIN.
Can I pin everything?
it automatically does, all you need is to post the media on your NOSTR.
my example node : https://filedrop.besoeasy.com/admin.html
Can I track how many nodes carry my files?
Simply enter your NPUB and it handles all the details automatically—you don't even have to monitor your node, just set it up and let it run on its own.