The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a protocol, hypermedia and file sharing peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. IPFS uses content-addressing to uniquely identify each file in a global namespace connecting IPFS hosts.
Origin
It was created by Juan Benet, who later founded Protocol Labs in May 2014.
The alpha version went live in February 2015.
Operation
IPFS operates similar to Bitorrent. Hence, it is designed to be censorship resistant. This is built on a decentralized system as opposed to using a centralized server. The users are the ones who are providing storage, providing resiliency to the system.
In contrast to BitTorrent, IPFS aims to create a single global network. This means that if two users publish a block of data with the same hash, the peers downloading the content from "user 1" will also exchange data with the ones downloading it from "user 2". IPFS aims to replace protocols used for static webpage delivery by using gateways which are accessible with HTTP.