# What is IPFS actually good for?

**URL:** <https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/what-is-ipfs-actually-good-for/12958>\
**Category:** Help\
**Tags:** blockchain, ipfs-cluster, files, ipfs-desktop\
**Created:** [December 16, 2021, 12:03am UTC](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/what-is-ipfs-actually-good-for/12958 "2021-12-16T00:03:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 7

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**Author:** ![Akita](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ipfs.tech/akita/32/2650_2.png) [@Akita](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/u/Akita)\
**Post date:** [December 21, 2021, 6:43pm UTC](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/what-is-ipfs-actually-good-for/12958/7 "2021-12-21T18:43:15Z")

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@Yaxir

I don’t know if you’ve seen this paper about Hadoop on IPFS? Maybe it helps.

> **[decentralising-big-data-processing.pdf](https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/scott-brisbane-thesis/decentralising-big-data-processing.pdf)**
>
> 1126.25 KB

> [@Yaxir](#):
>
> I can’t divulge too much as this is supposed to be an academic publication

Don’t forget to report back when it’s out 🙂

> [@SionoiS](#):
>
> Also, keep in mind, the only thing you can query on IPFS is CIDs.

That’s technically true, but yet you can built great things with small blocks.

@Yaxir I will list the projects built on IPFS I know loosely related to data management. As I’m not really in the field myself, a lot will be irrelevant, but some may help.

> **[Qri.io](https://github.com/qri-io)**
>
> "query" - free & open-source dataset versioning software - Qri.io

> **[textile.io](https://github.com/textileio)**
>
> We're hiring! textile.io has 168 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.

Now discontinued:

> **[GitHub - orbitdb/orbitdb: Peer-to-Peer Databases for the Decentralized Web](https://github.com/orbitdb/orbitdb)**
>
> Peer-to-Peer Databases for the Decentralized Web. Contribute to orbitdb/orbitdb development by creating an account on GitHub.

There may be more.

Depending on your model (does every peer want to edit and access the same piece of data  
? Is eventual consistency enough? etc?) , you may want to use gossipsub to have a topic per data that interested peers want to follow, to get updates quickly and have real-time updates. CRDT’s also come to mind.

Your design will also depend on the frequency of updates.

> [@Yaxir](#):
>
> information will be consistently updated and frequently accessed / referred to

Information being accessed and referred to is not a problem with IPFS. You can access the CID for a static version, or the CID pointed to by an IPNS record for an updatable version. See [qri.io](http://qri.io) above to see how they approach version management of datasets.  
The “consistently updated” part will depend on whether the updates are frequent, how dynamic is the group of peers having the right to update, do all the pieces of data have the same group of peers able to update them, and is peer accessing a non-super-fresh data ok (eventual consistency).  
It’s hard to help you further without knowing a bit more.

Good luck!

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