ipfs-search/ipfs-search

# Distributed search

Our ambition is to make ipfs-search into a truly distributed search engine. We are grateful To [Nina](https://niverel.tymyrddin.space/doku.php?id=en/start) for the work she put in to researching distributed search on behalf of ipfs-search. The following is adapted from the results, first published on Nina's homepage.

## What does it mean for search to be distributed?

### Distributed search engines


Sadly most that existed have gone defunct, leaving [seekstorm (former FAROO](https://seekstorm.com/ "https://seekstorm.com/") (Propietary, English), [Seeks](https://beniz.github.io/seeks/ "https://beniz.github.io/seeks/") (Open Source, English) and [YaCy](https://yacy.net/ "https://yacy.net/") (Fully distributed).

### IPFS search engines

**Noetic**
Noetic searches IPFS content as indexed by conventional search engines. Noetic has had no commits over the past three years.    

**Trinity**
Trinity is a more promising but currently unfunctional effort to make a search engine and has had no commits for a year.    

**ipfssearch.xyz**
ipfsearch.xyz searches decentrally but requires a pre-compiled database.    

**dweb.page**
dweb.page uses IOTA, a permissionless distributed ledger allowing every single user to run their own search engine.

### [Source](https://niverel.tymyrddin.space/en/play/bazaar/engines/distributed)




## The path to distributed search

Learning paths of technology evolutions which we travelled for getting transforming ideas for dweb search.

**Distributed technology**
* Blockchain
* Hashgraph
* DAG
* Holochain

**Assistive technologies**
* Zero knowledge proofs
* Smart contracts
* Voting
* Gossip about gossip

**Current implementations**
* IPFS
* BTFS
* FileCoin
* The usual peer crawling

**Internet-facing demo**
* Current IPFS Search architecture
* Good enough indexing

**Technologies for distributed search**
* IPFS
* Overlay networks
* Parsing
* Distributing the index on an IPFS  Cluster
* Querying the index
* Yggdrasil
* Testing

**Moonshot for realizing distributed search**


* Provider nodes that wish to participate, parse and index only the files they have added to a dweb (DHT hashes) and that have world file permissions.
* This local index is put on an (IPFS) cluster.
* A query can use the distributed index.
* Initial search functionalities are basic boolean search, to begin with.
* Settings functionality anticipates tuning.
* In the future, one can add to the search engine functionality with extensions.

### [Source](https://niverel.tymyrddin.space/en/play/stones/upsidedown/start)