SmartPubSub: Content-based Pub-Sub on IPFS

Abstract: The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a hypermedia distribution protocol enabling the creation of completely distributed applications. One of the most efficient and effective ways to distribute information is through notifications, with a producer of content (publisher) sharing content with other interested parts (subscribers). IPFS already implements topic-based publish-subscribe systems under an experimental flag. The goal of this work is to advance on that, by developing a content-based pub-sub system (with subscriptions as predicates about event content) to disseminate information on top of IPFS in an efficient and decentralized way, leveraging its infrastructure. We design two protocols: ScoutSubs that is completely decentralized; FastDelivery that is centered in the publisher. With these two approaches, we show the different advantages of having each of these protocols simultaneously by comparing ScoutSubs full decentralization, and FastDelivery centralization at data sources.