Decentralized Web Hosting Service Using IPFS and Ethereum Blockchain

Abstract

On the Internet, web applications are served from a centralized location i.e., server, for higher maintainability. However, in the centralized architecture, if there is an occurrence of server failure or crash, the web applications cannot be serve to the end-users until the server goes live again. In addition, in the existing centralized architecture for web hosting services, integrity of the hosted websites entirely relies on the third-party applications which checks for any possible threats in the system. In order to provide data integrity within the system and to overcome the above-mentioned single point of failure, we proposed the decentralized solution for hosting web applications, which provides more data availability to the end-users and maintains the integrity of the data. The proposed model makes use of the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) for storing and retrieving web applications, which provides high availability and reliability. In addition, the proposed model uses the Blockchain Technology for authenticity and confidentiality. The smart contracts are deploy on the Ethereum Block chain, which aids the service provider to manage the hosting service system. The proposed model also comparatively decreases the time taken to transfer the file over the IPFS using optimal path-finding algorithm. The proposed algorithm has a lesser time complexity when compared to the Bitswap protocol used in IPFS. The use of blockchain with IPFS cumulatively provides better authenticity via Ethereum Smart Contracts, which reduces risk and failure.