IPFS is just a technology, not a predatory financial gambit. It is a set of peer-to-peer protocols for finding content on a decentralized network. It relies on a Content Identifier (CID) rather than a location (URL), which means the focus is on the identity of the content (a hash) rather than a server where it's stored.

IPFS focuses on representing and addressing data, routing it, and transferring it. It's not a storage service, though storage is necessary to use it. It's been adopted by Cloudflare and implemented in Brave and Opera, among others, and work is being done to make it work in Chromium.

IPFS traffic is public unless encrypted, which is why there are rival decentralized projects that strive for stronger built-in privacy protection like Veilid.