Glossary
IPFS
InterPlanetary File System: a peer-to-peer content-addressed storage network. The de-facto host for NFT and dApp metadata.
IPFS addresses files by the hash of their content, not by their
location. ipfs://Qm... is the same file no matter who serves it,
and any node that holds the data can answer requests.
Most NFT metadata lives on IPFS because contracts can hard-code the content hash, guaranteeing the metadata cannot be silently swapped later. The catch is persistence: data only stays online while someone is "pinning" it. Pinning services (Pinata, Filebase) and Filecoin handle the long-term retention layer.