A digital work rarely relies solely on its author. It lives within a platform account, queries an external service, is registered on a blockchain network or is saved in a distributed file system. Each of these layers has its owner, its terms and its expiry date. In October 2026, we witnessed this with three closures: Porsche abandoned its NFT project, Blur announced the closure of its marketplace and the Abstract network scheduled its shutdown for December. I wrote about this in ‘Porsche, Blur and Abstract’.
The promise of IPFS
For the problem of archiving, a segment of the NFT world found an answer: IPFS, a distributed file system. Rather than storing the work on a server with an address, like a website, IPFS identifies it by its content, using a unique code calculated from the file itself. If the file changes, the code changes. Thus, a token pointing to an IPFS code always points to the same file, without relying on a specific server.
It is an elegant solution for the identity of the work. However, identifying a file is not the same as storing it.
What the official documentation says
The IPFS documentation itself explains this clearly. Network nodes periodically remove data that is not marked as permanent, in a process known as garbage collection. For a file to persist, it must be ‘pinned’. The documentation defines this as the mechanism that lets you tell IPFS to always keep an object somewhere.
In other words: if no one pins a work's file on any node, the code identifying it continues to exist, but the file may disappear. The token would point to content that no one is still storing.
The precedent: pinning in several places
The practice that resolves part of the problem is to pin the file on several nodes simultaneously, whether one's own or those of specialised services. That way, if one disappears, the others keep it.
Yet it has limitations. It depends on someone maintaining those nodes, paying for the services, and preserving the accounts and keys. It does not guarantee that the file will exist forever, nor that the interface to view it will continue to function. IPFS is a storage protocol, not an institutional archive: there is no one tasked with the responsibility of preserving the work.
Who controls the work
In my view, the closures of 2026 and the fine print of IPFS say the same thing: technology can guarantee the identity of a digital work, but not its continuity. Continuity depends on someone assuming the responsibility to preserve it, and that is a human, economic and institutional decision, not a technical one.
For the artist and the collector, the practical consequence is not to entrust the work to a single layer: store the file independently, know which network each token is on, and document every dependency. I explain this in the guide on works that rely on the internet or an API and on what to do if the platform closes.
About the open conversation
This text separates data from my interpretation and does not constitute legal advice. If you work with NFTs, IPFS or digital preservation and wish to clarify a point or discuss this interpretation, this notebook remains open: write to me.
The author's relationship to the cases
I hold digital work in my collection, the Esteban-Ruiz Collection. I have no relationship with Porsche, Blur or Abstract, nor with the storage services mentioned.