InterPlanetary Name System (IPNS)
If you do not want to update a DNS TXT record on every deploy, point DNSLink at IPNS and republish the IPNS record to the new CID. IPNS is the mutable pointer that makes content-addressed storage usable for evolving sites.
What It Defines
Mutable naming layer for IPFS. An IPNS name is a public key (or an arbitrarily named key with a verifiable signature record) that points to a CID and can be republished to a new CID without changing the name. Records are signed, versioned (sequence numbers), and carry validity windows. IPNS records are typically distributed via the libp2p DHT and PubSub, but DNSLink can also embed an IPNS path (`dnslink=/ipns/k51…`) so DNS becomes a stable indirection layer over IPNS. Trades immediate immutability for the ability to roll a deployment forward without DNS edits.
Canonical (Normative)
Convenient (Practical)
Open community of implementers (Protocol Labs, Shipyard, Boost, Helia, Kubo, and others) that maintains the InterPlanetary File System spec family at specs.ipfs.tech. Publishes content-addressing primitives (CID, Multihash, Multibase, Multiaddr), the IPLD data model, naming systems (IPNS, DNSLink), and the HTTP Gateway specs (Path, Subdomain, Trustless, DNSLink) that bridge content-addressed storage to ordinary browsers.
Related Specs
DNSLink is how you give an IPFS/IPNS deployment a stable human URL like `mysite.example.com` while the underlying CID changes every release. If you ever host static sites, agent artifacts, or signed manifests on IPFS and want a normal-looking domain, this is the spec.
Every DNSLink record, IPFS gateway URL, IPNS publish, and Filecoin deal references content by CID. If you do not understand what the bytes after `/ipfs/` mean, you cannot debug deploy/cache issues, validate signed manifests, or design content-addressed pipelines.
Path gateways are how a regular browser without IPFS support fetches content-addressed data. Knowing the spec is required to operate a self-hosted gateway, debug 404/range/CORS issues, or build clients that fall back from native IPFS to HTTP gateways.
Path gateways break the web origin model — every CID shares the gateway origin. Subdomain gateways are the production-correct choice for hosting independent sites. This is also the only model that makes single-page apps with cookies and Service Workers function on a public gateway.