Introducing the IPFS Ecosystem Working Group

Introducing the IPFS Ecosystem Working Group

Since its initial release over 9 years ago, IPFS has been stewarded by a variety of teams and individual contributors, both within and outside of Protocol Labs. More recently though, it has lacked a dedicated team focused on nothing other than the success of the IPFS ecosystem. It is with this reality in mind that we are excited to announce the formation of the brand new IPFS Ecosystem Working Group!

At launch, the IPFS Ecosystem WG consists of Protocol Labs contributors, but we are forming with the explicit purpose of spinning out into our own independent entity over the coming months. We believe that this working group and its autonomy will be critical in helping propel IPFS toward a better and even brighter future.

Initially, we have four core goals:

  1. Foster a thriving ecosystem by advocating for IPFS,
  2. Build bridges between IPFS and other ecosystems that could benefit from content addressing,
  3. Grow the community and develop strong and durable community ownership of the IPFS project as a public good, and
  4. Spin out from Protocol Labs into a self-sustaining organization that can support the IPFS community and build robust, effective governance for the protocol.

The future of IPFS requires greater degrees of decentralization, so you can expect other IPFS-focused teams to begin spinning out from Protocol Labs in the future as well.

As we continue to make progress towards these goals, we will provide updates and work in the open so as to keep the entire community in-the-loop with what we’re doing. A thriving ecosystem requires care and attention, and we believe that this new initiative and nimble team will be able to deliver on exactly that. But our work is only part of the story: community ownership means that your voice as IPFS users, operators, or contributors needs to be heard just as much as ours.

So if you have comments, questions, or concerns, then please join the discussion in the comments section below, via the Ecosystem section of the IPFS Forums (opens new window), or the various chat links that follow – together let’s work on making IPFS thrive!

Forums (opens new window) | Discord (opens new window) | Slack (opens new window) | Matrix (opens new window)