Fission is the lead organizer for IPFS Connect Istanbul. During the event, we are thrilled to be putting on our own workshop showcasing IPVM.
IPVM, or the InterPlanetary Virtual Machine, aims to be the easiest, fastest, most secure, and open way to run WebAssembly functions anywhere.
Using content-addressed data, public key infrastructure (PKI), and capabilities, IPVM liberates computation from its dependence on pre-negotiated services and paves the way for interoperability.
If you've been following our work at Fission, you'll note that IPVM has been our vision from day one. But we knew that before we could get to distributed compute, we had to build the auth and data layers first. Now that UCAN and WNFS are done, we're ready to launch IPVM.
The IPVM workshop will be the first-ever interactive workshop. You can get hands-on without having to go to the repo. Here are the details:
IPVM Workshop: Running WebAssembly Workflows with IPFS
November 16th, 1:30 - 3:30 PM
Join the Fission team in a live workshop about the InterPlanetary Virtual Machine (IPVM), an open protocol for decentralized computation.
We'll be walking through how to set up and install a Homestar node, an IPVM reference implementation written in Rust optimized for running WebAssembly (Wasm) functions in workflows.
Workshop participants should bring their laptops. We'll walk through the following experiences:
- Install a Homestar node
- Connect to Homestar node peers in the workshop
- Run example workflows
- Share results of computation between local peers
- Experiment with authoring your own workflows and functions
Let's break each of these experiences down:
Install a Homestar node and connect to Homestar node peers - Homestar is Fission's Rust + Wasm implementation of IPVM. During the workshop, users will be able to install Homestar on their machines and connect to other Homestar nodes
Sneak Peak at the Homestar Mascot!
Run Example Workflows - A workflow is a series of individual tasks (also known as a step function) wired together. In the IPVM Workshop, we will demonstrate a couple of workflows to showcase some of the capabilities of IPVM.
There will also be a control panel that will serve as the UI where the user can track their activity, view the receipts they are outputting, review pre-deployed WebAssembly tasks, and more.
Share results of computation between local peers - This is a fun one! One of the impressive features of IPVM is the more IPVM is used, the more efficient it is! That’s because every time a task is run, the output is saved in the network as a CID and is used in future computations. Think of it like global caching! The technical term for this is memoization. Homestar keeps a table (like a spreadsheet) of the ID for the function, its arguments, and its result. It allows the user to skip running the task and substitute the result. Just like IPFS's table that associates hashes to data to let anyone find and download the content, this does the same for function results. During the workshop, we will see this play out in real-time as we run computations and share those results with our fellow workshop attendees/node peers.
Experiment with authoring your own workflows and functions - Once attendees start getting comfortable with IPVM, they can begin to play with workflows, tweak parameters, and even bring their own Wasm functions.
Who should attend this workshop?
IPVM is for Front End Web Developers
Anything you would normally need a backend for, IPVM can do for you. For example, IPVM can help you resize images. If you need to parse a large text document and it's too big to do locally on your machine, give it to IPVM. IPVM can pull data off of IPFS so you can operate on it and generate a new CID to pass around. You can even build map tiling. OpenStreetMap, for example, utilizes too much data for your phone or browser to work with, but you could parallelize that work across many machines and have them send you back the rendered map.
IPVM is an excellent serverless computing option. Whether you want to use the cloud, someone else's machine, your own machine, or a mix, IPVM is the solution you've been looking for.
IPVM is for Web3 Developers
Similar to a computation rollup, but instead of needing to be on-chain, it also extends off-chain. Imagine if you need to call something out in the real world, like Twitter, Bluesky, or an email server. You want to talk to external systems.
For example, say you want to take your NFT and make it gray-scaled.
Option 1: Do the image manipulation on-chain. The problem with this is the cost of gas would be prohibitively high. As in thousands and thousands of dollars.
Option 2: Run a server. This would work, but now you're no longer Web3 and paying money to a centralized cloud provider.
Option 3: IPVM. You get the benefits of decentralization, but the functions can run off-chain, saving you money and compute resources.
In the same way that IPFS saves developers from storing their NFTs on-chain, IPVM saves developers from having to run computations on-chain.
IPVM is for ETHGlobal Hackathon Participants
For those participating in the ETHGlobal Istanbul Hackathon, IPVM is a great tool to have in your toolkit. You'll probably do some computations locally, but if they slow your machine down, you can always push them to the hosted IPVM node to do the heavy lifting. Unlike centralized cloud platforms that require users to go through the network for everything, IPVM lets you choose where you want to do your computations, so you are always in control of how you allocate your resources.
In conclusion, we're so excited for you to get your hands on Homestar. This is an early version for folks to experience and learn how decentralized compute with content addressing can work. Run it yourself and get ready to plug into a larger network of function writers and node providers.
Sign up for the IPVM Workshop by purchasing a ticket to IPFS Connect Istanbul and letting us know which of the workshops you'll be attending, including options from our friends at Iroh and Web3 Storage + Saturn (you can attend all three!)
Can't make it to the event? Sign up for the Homestar beta.