I wish this article mentioned something about BitSwap; before reading the IPFS paper, I was doubtful about anyone wanting to participate without incentives.<p>Still, even after skimming the paper, it sounds like a <i>lot</i> really depends on how well BitSwap is implemented. At one point, the paper says this:<p>&gt; While the notion of a barter system implies a virtual currency could be created, this would require a global ledger to track ownership and transfer of the currency. This can be implemented as a BitSwap Strategy, and will be explored in a future paper.<p>So it kind of sounds like they need something like bitcoin, but don&#x27;t want it to be tightly coupled to bitcoin - which is probably smart. But without a single clear solution for a reliable BitSwap strategy (and I&#x27;m not sure how it could be reliable without a distributed global ledger of some kind), it&#x27;s hard to see how&#x2F;why the necessary resources will be contributed to the IPFS network.