Why Gateways?
What is their purpose? Why do I need them?
Gateways are the portal to access content pinned on IPFS on modern-day applications.
When you pin your content to Pinata, it will be available to all on the public IPFS network. This means that anybody running an IPFS node can access content stored on Pinata through their own IPFS node.
However, directly running a node isn't the only way to access content, nor is it the easiest. The most common way to retrieve content on the IPFS network is through an IPFS gateway.
Most applications, including your everyday browser, do not yet support IPFS natively. Gateways are IPFS nodes allow you to leverage the HTTP protocol (via a web URL) to request data by CID from the IPFS network.
Gateways often take the following form:
The
CID is the content identifier (also known as a hash) for the content you want to retrieve.In some ways, gateways are sort of like a translator that allow your content to be understood and served properly on modern platforms.
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Last modified 2mo ago