Use case for different IPNS Keys

[TroyWilson1]

I’m testing and trying out IPFS/IPNS and wanted to find out a use case for needing/using different keys for IPNS.

[lidel]

You may want to be able to publish to the same IPNS address from different machines, each having its own IPFS node:

Can multiple nodes share the same peer id?

Duplicate of node identity is probably a bad idea, but if you reframe the question into “can I publish to the same IPNS key from multiple boxes?”, then it makes more sense. If you use dedicated key for that. (Someone may want to publish a static blog from home, and then from work laptop) I created PoC of publishing to the same PeerId from two different boxes some time ago:

[TroyWilson1]

Ok, so that helps explain a few things. The next question is “How” publish to the same IPNS key from multiple boxes? Do you copy one key to the other machine or how does that work?

[lidel]

Yes, exactly that: you copy key to nodes that should have publishing rights.

I tested it over HTTP API some time ago:

IPNS publishing after generating a key

Wow, I tested it via HTTP APIs you linked and it seems to… work just fine. Not sure why you had different IPNS hash, but I got the feeling you were regenerating key instead of generating it only once and copying it to all nodes that should be able to publish with it. I wrote a short instruction, check if you were following the same steps: Publishing with the same key from two different nodes I generated a new key under alias “test”: nodeA $ curl 'http://localhost:5001/api/v0/key/ge…