Key facts
- Shipyard, an IPFS maintainer, is ceasing operations on September 30.
- Protocol Labs has ended funding for Shipyard.
- This leaves projects like Kubo, Helia, and IPFS Desktop without dedicated maintainers.
- Shipyard will shut down public infrastructure including ipfs.io and dweb.link.
- Protocol Labs will manage the future of the infrastructure and domains.
- IPFS will transition to a 'lighter-weight stewardship' model with IPFS Foundation grants.
Shipyard, a key engineering and maintenance collective for the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), will cease its operations on September 30 after Protocol Labs, the organization that created IPFS and Filecoin, declined to renew its funding. This decision leaves several critical IPFS projects, including Kubo, Helia, Boxo, Rainbow, IPFS Desktop, and IPFS Companion, without dedicated maintainers.
Shipyard also announced it will stop operating public infrastructure such as ipfs.io, dweb.link, delegated-ipfs.dev, and the IPFS bootstrap nodes. Protocol Labs, which owns the associated domains and infrastructure, will decide their future.
While IPFS itself is not shutting down, the departure of Shipyard means many popular implementations and services will lack dedicated stewardship unless other maintainers step in. Molly Mackinlay, engineering and research lead at Protocol Labs, stated in a forum discussion that IPFS will move to a "lighter-weight stewardship" model, utilizing IPFS Foundation grants for individual maintainers, and that development on decentralized public infrastructure will continue.