We support pinning your IPFS content. If you don’t pin it, we garbage collect when we need to reclaim space. However, we will be collecting more periodically soon.
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So as long as it’s pinned it stays up indefinitely?
I see that the pinning API is unauthenticated. Is there a way to associate my pins to my account so I can manage them?
Correct, that is the functionality now, we are very close to adding auth to the IPFS endpoint which will give you greater control over your content. If you want to provide more details on your use-case we’d love to hear more, always helps us make sure we are going in the right direction.
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Oh that’s cool! The use-case I have in mind right now is simply deleting content in case I don’t want it to be seeded anymore. (Of course peers who have a copy of it can keep seeding it, but I’d at least remove the stable seed I myself uploaded to.)
I do hope there remains some unauthenticated option to use Infura though, even if more strongly rate-limited, because it makes for such a wonderful and frictionless on-ramp to new users. Infura is the only default upload method for ipfs-deploy, an npm package I’m working on, at the moment because it’s the only one I know of that can be used right away without needing to sign up or leave the command line.
Really appreciate the feedback!
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Hey Mike!
I have some doubts about infura’s IPFS remote node, and you “almost” answered them. Could you give me more insights?
- Infura’s IPFS remote node doesn’t pin files; it only add them, for obvious reasons. That’s it?
I’m using ipfs-http-client with infura in my DApp, and that’s the kind of thing hard to test, once GC could take months to remove them.
We definitely support pinning, when making a request to /add, the IPFS API defaults to pinning content if not explicitly requested not to
pin [bool]: Pin this object when adding. Default: "true". Required: no.
Does your use case depend on being able to control GC or file deletion?
My need is that the file added will be always available.
So, when you need space, you unpin them, and then GC?
Currently, we do not unpin anything that has been pinned or added using the default pinning setting.
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Nice. Thank you!
I thought that, in a logical way, infura would need space at some point, and would remove files that had already been around for a long time.
Also, that’s a important information that I could’nt find anywhere. Still, I found other people with the same doubt who did not get the answer. This information deserves to be highlighted.
Thank you again!
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Hello, i was not sure if i should open a new thread but since this one already talk about it, i jump in.
Im developping an dapp on blockchain and want store files on IPFS, im then using ipfs.infura.io and pin the files as i want it there “for ever”.
I have few questions, if i understood well, as of nos, no pinned files are ever removed by the GC and add file size limit is 100mb.
All this is very cool but how is this going to last in the long run? i mean is there a possibility that this change in future? like finally deciding to remove some files, lower the max size to a couple of mb etc?
Thank you for your services, just trying to understand everything before definitelly implementing it in my dapp.
Hi @Christophe_Verdot we will be launching a premium version of IPFS this year that will formalize our Free and Paid versions of the IPFS product. There will be a transitionary period from the old beta system to the new formalized structure where you will need to migrate your pinned data using an Infura account and Infura project authentication credentials. We will give everyone lots of time to do the transition and lots of notice about the launch and any changes to current pinned data.
Thank you for your reply, i have a couple of questions, is there somewhere in the official doc or website where i can see current IPFS limitations? Didnt finnd it except of having it mentioned in some forum post.
If i start implement ipfs now with my dapp and start pining my dapp users files with ipfs.infura.io, this mean when there will be the change, i will switch to paid, will have to manually (meaning writting a script to do it) retrieve all my users ipfs file hash from my dapp storage and then repin them on the new formalized structure? Without having to download and re add all files again? Is that correct? I ask so i can anticipate already eventually 
In short if i start now with using current system ill be able to switch to new one without losing already added files ? Just want be sure so i can start implement it already
Thank you in advance
Due to our IPFS service still being in beta mode, we haven’t published any of the restrictions in our docs as we will be overhauling our IPFS docs completely to accompany the premium version release.
What you have outlined here is correct! As long as you maintain a record of the hashes associated with your application, during the migration period, you will be able to re-pin those hashes using your new authentication and you will see no downtime in data access if you do this during the migration period.
Sound good, thanks a lot