On the impact of marketplaces on the availability of NFT assets on the IPFS network

Abstract

The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is among the most well-known distributed file systems applied in Web3 applications, where data storage is involved. Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) represent one of the main scenarios in which distributed content sharing is enacted via IPFS. Generally, NFTs are created, sold and bought via so-called marketplaces, easing the technical difficulties. They play a crucial role during the sale of NFTs because they act as intermediaries between users and underlying technologies. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of NFT marketplaces on the availability of NFT resources in the IPFS network. We focus on the relationship between resources and marketplaces, trying to understand whether access to some of the resources related to NFTs is transparent and consistent with the information present in the contract. We selected $\mathbf{1 0}$ collections and 3 NFTs for each collection and monitored these assets on IPFS. For the monitoring phase, we deployed our node and requested providers of the assets every six hours for two weeks. Our analysis shows that IPFS does not guarantee high availability and marketplaces refer to copies of NFTs, thus violating the integrity and security guaranteed by NFTs and IPFS.