Protocol Labs

Established in 2014 and founded by Juan Benet, Protocol Labs is a research, development, and deployment lab for network protocols. The company launched Filecoin, which powers a Blockchain based peer-to-peer storage network on top of its IPFS. Protocol Labs also collaborated with AngelList to produce CoinList.

Filecoin

The open-source R&D laboratory's projects include IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and others. IPFS makes the web work peer-to-peer. It is a protocol for storing, addressing, and transferring data, created to replace HTTP in different contexts. IPFS utilizes content-addressing to identify and link to information. It is a protocol of Web3, crypto, and the decentralized web movements. IPFS serves end users and developers, powering the websites and applications of startups, enterprises, and blockchains.

On the other hand, Filecoin is a decentralized storage network, created to store information. It is a cryptocurrency incentivized decentralized market, where storage providers receive filecoin tokens for renting out storage space. It has been described as airbnb for cloud storage. Protocol Labs' systems are based on protocols like Git, DHTs, BitTorrent, Bitcoin, and SFS. The company is focused on providing a data-locality aware, network stack for distributed applications, and a model for ambient storage.