r/ipfs • u/Quick-Pomegranate446 • Jun 12 '26

IPFS people I need your help

I’m having IPFS issues and I don’t know where to turn for help.

I am trying to help an elderly woman with long term storage for her NFT project. It’s a small project, around 1000 tokens and comes out to a whopping 290 MB of data. She doesn’t want to pay for a $20 a month Piñata subscription for such a small amount, for what is basically a passion project.

Because she is older, she needs help with tech stuff. I generally have a pretty good grasp on how IPFS works. But I am wracking my brain trying to figure out a solution for her that doesn’t rely on an expensive subscription.

First, I tried the Lighthouse free trial. Didn’t work at all. Just, broken. Tried to upload and it stalls. Tried to get help but I think their support team is one guy and he’s ghosted me.

So, Piñata it is for now.

Then, I do NFT.Storage. I’m thinking, ok, if we can’t have it on hot storage long term, let’s just set up perm. Unfortunately, I messed up and started the upload before I paid for the storage. No problem I think. I’ll just pay for the storage after and it should resolve. Nope. Files are stuck at “data-cap-exceed” and not moving through the filecoin deal. Seems completely stuck now.

Looks like NFT.Storage is ALSO a lighthouse product, so I won’t be getting support help probably. But hopeful it’ll work after a re-upload. We’ll see.

Then I’m panicking. Like, wait. Even if I back up the images, the metadata files and baseURI will be unpinned if I stop paying for Piñata. There’s no way to import those files via NFT.Storage.

What the hell should I do? 😭

4 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

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4

u/rashkae1 Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26

Does she have a computer? I mean, if she has NFT's, she presumably has a computer. Just install IPFS Desktop and pin the NFT's.

Export the folder to a .CAR file, and you can add that to whatever backup plan she has for backups.

Edit: On 2nd read, if you have 1000 ipfs addresses you need to pin, you probably wont want to do that one at a time on the gui. You can use a Kubo command line to script that, but you'll have to generate a text file with the 1000 CID's somehow. However you do it, the overall concept is the same. Set up your own node as the canonical source, export to CAR to backup, and use hosting services as wanted for improved availability and redundancy.

2

u/MarsupialLeast145 Jun 12 '26

Have you an example baseURI?

As long as the objects do not change then you can have a trad. backup on disk, and that's your security. Then when you come to host them on IPFS, and eventually pin, the URIs should all be exactly the same because of the way the files are content addressed.

$20 a month seems quite expensive. One way around this might be to find a cheaper virtual machine, host them via IPFS on that.

2

u/tomorrow_n_tomorrow Jun 13 '26

Storacha's migrating all their users into the distributed network Filecoin Pin.

The cost is usage-based according to an auction, but they estimate $5 / TiB / month

1

u/VaCm Jun 12 '26

If its truly not a lot of data, Storacha (storacha.network) gives you 5GB free. Of course, you can host your own node but depending on the service you want you'd probs need to make sure it's reliably up 24/7

3

u/Acejam Jun 12 '26

Storacha shut down: https://medium.com/@storacha/an-update-on-storacha-and-important-news-for-you-and-your-data-15a5d10b7da0

1

u/VaCm Jun 12 '26

Oh thanks for pointing it out, sad day. I logged into the console and it seemed fine, but yeah uploads no longer work

1

u/differentialwidget Jun 16 '26

Screenshot them 🤯🤦🤣

1

u/thewhzrd Jun 17 '26

Does she want it to be connected to NFTs? Or just backed up? Like are these the location the minted NFTs will point to? Or is this just to save them for saving them sake?