Products · Product
IPFS
Raised as a usability problem by 52 people on Hacker News over 12 years (2015–2026), in 47 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
IPNS is so slow that it makes the experience unpleasantUnreviewed
20152026- Using IPNS is so slow that it makes the experience unpleasant2021-09-20
- Tried it repeatedly but hit unexplained very slow bootstrap times and IPNS problems2021-07-20
- IPNS name resolution takes 30+ seconds, making it annoyingly slow to use2020-05-08
Accessing files on the decentralised network is extremely slowUnreviewed
20152026- Accessing files on the decentralised network is extremely slow2026-09-24
- Pages take 30+ seconds to load and often time out2023-03-06
- Files take 3-30 seconds to start loading, and the node is hard to run at scale2022-07-06
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Accessing files on the decentralised network is extremely slow2026-09-24
- Was absolutely unusable when the commenter tried it years ago2026-08-26
- Too many confusingly overlapping IPFS components, hard to tell what to use2026-08-24
- Transfers took about a week to start and connecting was slow and finicky2025-09-22
- Spent an hour without understanding how to actually use it2024-10-16
- Expert can't get pinned content to be available everywhere, despite tinkering with settings2024-01-31
- Excruciatingly slow, clunky and buggy in practice, and fails at larger file collections2024-01-17
- File lookups take too long to be usable for user-facing features2024-01-16
- Garbage collection is unreliable, forcing the commenter to wipe the whole dataset every few days2024-01-16
- Needs a native app running, drains phone battery, and is not as simple as Google Drive2024-01-13
- Renamed application and DHT names are confusing, with unclear purpose for the new name2023-10-03
- Very slow name resolution and slow update propagation2023-06-04
- Apps freeze with no indication of what is going on when accessing the /ipfs/ directory2023-04-15
- Pages take 30+ seconds to load and often time out2023-03-06
- Managing pins is hard; basic UX like listing pin progress has not improved in years2022-11-21
- Hard to make IPFS work together with Filecoin2022-10-10
- Fetching small files through public gateways takes minutes, making availability testing painful2022-10-10
- Streaming built on IPFS lags about two minutes even on a local network2022-10-08
- Files take 3-30 seconds to start loading, and the node is hard to run at scale2022-07-06
- Becomes very slow once more than a million files are added2022-06-17
- Network is too slow to use, and its traffic also makes the network unusable2022-05-25
- Server becomes so sluggish that SSH logins take minutes while go-ipfs runs2022-05-24
- Content loads incredibly slowly and cannot be discovered2022-05-24
- Adding new files becomes impossible once the file count reaches about 100k because the tables are so slow2022-03-06
- Freezes when clicking tabs, sometimes opening the wrong tab2021-10-17
- Simple file retrieval never happens and the CLI gives no feedback on errors2021-10-17
- Fetching files not cached locally takes several seconds, sometimes fails entirely2021-10-17
- Without a centralized node they control, IPFS is painfully slow and unusable for them2021-10-17
- Using IPNS is so slow that it makes the experience unpleasant2021-09-20
- Hard to find hashes, browse via web UI, and download directories compared to torrents2021-08-02
- Public IPFS resolvers are very slow, making content hard for normal people to access2021-08-02
- Frequently fails to find content on the DHT and is very slow2021-08-02
- Directories won't show until all file blocks download, making browsing painfully slow2021-08-02
- Tried it repeatedly but hit unexplained very slow bootstrap times and IPNS problems2021-07-20
- Becomes almost unusable when running fully peer-to-peer instead of through a gateway2020-12-05
- IPNS name resolution takes 30+ seconds, making it annoyingly slow to use2020-05-08
- API parameters are unnamed and methods are unintuitive, like using GET for copy2020-04-29
- IPNS is slow and incomplete, and confuses people who try it2020-01-20
- Downloads are extremely slow, even on the same LAN, and connections drop mid-transfer2020-01-20
- Scattered, inconsistent project sites and broken READMEs make it hard to know what's current2020-01-20
- Commenter finds the IPFS system unusable in practice2019-12-03
- Pinning requires an open daemon connection for the whole duration and many files never pin2019-11-20
- Pinning call hangs and times out, forcing developers to build complex workarounds2019-06-13
- Links break on the gateway because URLs are content-addressed and change with each page version2019-06-12
- IPNS is so slow it is unusable for human-readable names2019-06-12
- IPNS names expire after a day, so published names stop working unless refreshed2019-06-12
- Getting Started page doesn't explain basic structure and uses undefined jargon2019-06-09
- Publishing content to IPFS has usability problems that make it hard to use2019-05-22
- Unusably slow and resource-hungry, and the MFS bug lost the user's file references twice.2019-01-22
- Commenter calls IPFS nearly unusable, without specifying what is hard2018-12-24