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Shipyard IPFS work concludes after Protocol Labs ends funding

Shipyard, the maintainer of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), will conclude its engineering, maintenance, and infrastructure operations on September 30. This decision follows Protocol Labs' discontinuation of funding for Shipyard IPFS work. The funding loss will leave projects such as Kubo, Helia, Boxo, Rainbow, IPFS Desktop, and IPFS Companion without dedicated maintainers, as stated by Shipyard in a Monday blog post.

Impact on IPFS Services

Public infrastructure, including ipfs.io, dweb.link, delegated-ipfs.dev, and IPFS bootstrap nodes, will cease operation under Shipyard. While IPFS itself will continue, the absence of Shipyard IPFS work removes dedicated oversight from several popular implementations and services, pending new maintainers. Protocol Labs is a research and development organization that created IPFS and Filecoin, a blockchain network designed to incentivize decentralized data storage.

Future Stewardship and Shipyard's Origins

Protocol Labs engineering and research lead Molly Mackinlay indicated a transition to a more streamlined stewardship model, with IPFS Foundation grants supporting individual maintainers. Mackinlay affirmed that development of decentralized public infrastructure would persist. Shipyard was founded in 2024 by former Protocol Labs developers with extensive experience in IPFS, established as an independent collective of longtime IPFS developers who previously worked at Protocol Labs.

Simonas Brazionis

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