The new version of the browser Brave, designed for privacy lovers on the web, has support for the distributed file system IPFS. Thanks to this protocol users can not worry about content blocking and at the same time load sites faster. Naturally, it is necessary that the desired resource should also support this technology.

According to the creators, in typical scenarios of use Brave works up to three times faster than the most popular browser of today – Google Chrome. In addition, it uses a third less RAM and cuts off advertising and all the ways of tracking the user. As a result, it saves traffic and battery life on a single charge for mobile devices. Now, according to The Verge, another important networking technology of the future has been added to the browser.

The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) distributed file system could be called a “torrent protocol for sites.” And, in fact, its application is not limited to web pages. IPFS allows you to form a decentralized repository for absolutely any content: text, audio, video, documents and all other types of files. On its basis it is easy to create streaming services, Internet portals and local resources, as well as social networks and messaging services. And without any need for central nodes – servers.

The existing technologies that underlie the World Wide Web – DNS, HTTP – are simultaneously considered its most vulnerable places. Almost always a long loading site is not so much related to the speed of access to the network, as to several problematic links to remote resources. Due to the nature of the protocol, if one of them leads to the necessary server with insufficient performance or bandwidth, it will delay loading the rest of the content on the page.

With IPFS, data is stored in a distributed manner: each participant on the network acts as a node in the network. The location of the desired data is stored as a hash sum and searching for the data takes as much time as performing a normal DNS query. But downloading content is much faster, because the browser doesn’t have to download everything from one server: it gets data from many computers independently. The InterPlanetary File System has the potential to radically transform the entire Internet, making it safer, more secure and much faster. The project has a large number of supporters among IT professionals, developers, and industry enthusiasts.

Of course, all the advantages of IPFS are revealed only if the desired resource supports this protocol. These sites are still few, but their number is growing. The team behind the Brave browser is one of the major contributors to the InterPlanetary File System project. By adding support for it to their product, they have taken a big step toward popularizing the protocol.

The Brave browser appeared in 2016 and has been steadily building an audience ever since. It is based on the Chromium engine, its source code is open, and the program itself is distributed for free. The business model of the project is interesting: users choose which ads they want to see and can be rewarded for viewing them. The reward is up to 70% of what Brave pays advertisers. And users, in turn, can spend the earned money to reward their favorite sites.

This model allows you to achieve several goals at once. First, to get money to keep the project running. Secondly, to encourage users to stay with Brave, and thirdly, to reward sites that do not abuse advertising and create really interesting content. However, many people consider this approach a real rip-off – after all, the browser blocks most of the ads on web pages, and earns its own money from it.

On the other hand, for the user, such a path may look fairer. Brave blocks only ads that track a site visitor’s actions and collect data about them. The rest of the banners or text remain untouched. The ads built into the browser are shown in a new tab or in the notification area, which means they don’t cover the page’s content. Users also have complete freedom to choose which ads to see, and whether to see them at all. Finally, the Brave team claims that the browser doesn’t collect any data about its customers, and no audits to date have challenged this.