Retrieval Market Specification

This specification site offers an architectural overview of the Filecoin Retrieval Market. The work here is synthesized from several previous efforts at building a Retrieval market. Previous efforts have gone deep into "how" to build a specific part of the Retrieval Market. This document aims to give the "40,000 foot" view: what are all the moving parts that will make up the Filecoin Retrieval Market and how do they relate to each other?

The secondary goal of this specification is to describe how to build the system as a whole, in the form of a roadmap. The roadmap charts various stages of development that all move towards the broad goal of the Filecoin Retrieval Market becoming "CDN for the decentralized web". This roadmap provides recommendations for various milestones during the estimated "first year" of development, then offers suggestions for future development.

The final goal of this specification is to decentralize development of the Filecoin retrieval market, enabling it to be completed faster by allowing more work to happen in parallel, much of it outside Protocol Labs. By drawing clear boundaries around units of functionality in the Filecoin Retrieval Market, we can increase the ability of third parties, PL Research, or Filecoin dev grantees to go deep on building a particular part of the specification.