Brave has crossed a major milestone, becoming the first browser to support the new IPFS protocol.

Brave is an independent, open source browser co-founded by CEO Brendan Eich, former CEO of Mozilla, and Brian Bondy. The browser uses the open source Chromium rendering engine, giving it the same speed and compatibility advantages as Google Chrome. From the beginning, however, Brave has placed a major emphasis on privacy and security, consistently being recognized as one of the most private out-of-the-box browsers.

The indie browser has now become the first to support IPFS, beating its larger rivals. IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) emphasizes a decentralized web, providing additional speed and security. In essence, IPFS works similar to BitTorrent, allowing users to download data from multiple sources, rather than from a single location. It also provides a level of resiliency not present with traditional HTTP.

“We’re thrilled to be the first browser to offer a native IPFS integration with today’s Brave desktop browser release,” said Brian Bondy, CTO and co-founder of Brave. “Providing Brave’s 1 million+ verified content creators with the power to seamlessly serve content to millions of new users across the globe via a new and secure protocol, IPFS gives users a solution to the problem of centralized servers creating a central point of failure for content access. IPFS’ innovative content addressing uses Content Identifiers (CIDs) to form an address based on the content itself as opposed to locating data based on the address of a server. Integrating the IPFS open-source network is a key milestone in making the Web more transparent, decentralized, and resilient.”

Brave’s adoption of IPFS is a step in the right direction, hopefully a step other browser makers quickly follow.