Enhancing NFT Marketplaces with IPFS Gateways

What Are IPFS Gateways—and Why Do They Matter for NFT Platforms?

If you’re building on decentralized storage, you’ve probably asked:
What are IPFS gateways?

An IPFS gateway acts as a bridge between the decentralized IPFS network and the traditional web. It lets users access IPFS content via HTTP—so browsers, apps, and marketplaces can fetch NFT images and metadata without running a node.

There’s no shortage of options—just check any IPFS gateway list and you’ll see public gateways like ipfs.io, w3s.link, and nftstorage.link. But public gateways often come with limitations: slow load times, rate limits, and occasional downtime.

If you're wondering which IPFS gateways are the best? The gateways operated by Filebase—are backed by a dedicated infrastructure stack and global IPFS CDN. They’re built for speed, uptime, and scale. That’s critical for NFT marketplaces, where even a few seconds of lag can lead to lower engagement and fewer conversions.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s talk about the blockers most marketplaces run into—and how to solve them.

The Bottleneck Most NFT Marketplaces Don’t See Coming

NFT marketplaces are built on speed. From discovering new drops to browsing collections, users expect near-instant access to images and metadata. But when that content lives on IPFS, performance isn’t always guaranteed.

IPFS is decentralized, resilient, and ideal for storing NFT assets—but it was never designed to serve content with the speed modern users expect. That’s where IPFS gateways come in.

If your platform is still relying on public gateways or default IPFS behavior, you're likely dealing with:

• Slow image loading times
• Delayed metadata rendering
• Inconsistent access across different regions
• Bottlenecks during peak traffic hours

All of these impact trust, engagement, and conversion. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

The Better State: Fast, Reliable NFT Delivery at Scale

Now imagine your marketplace delivering high-res visuals and metadata instantly—no lag, no loading wheels, no broken previews.

That’s what happens when you layer an IPFS gateway on top of your decentralized storage—and better yet, one that’s optimized by a global CDN. Filebase operates its own IPFS gateway infrastructure with Points of Presence (PoPs) across North America, Europe, and Asia, ensuring fast, reliable delivery no matter where your users are.

With Filebase:

• ✅ Images load fast from the nearest location
• ✅ Metadata is cached and served instantly
• ✅ Your platform stays performant under heavy load
• ✅ You avoid third-party CDNs and potential single points of failure

This isn't theoretical—it's production-tested infrastructure used by real Web3 apps every day.

How Filebase IPFS Gateways Work

When your marketplace makes a request to an NFT asset stored on IPFS, Filebase steps in to handle the hard part. Our IPFS gateway:

• Retrieves the content by CID
• Caches it at the edge across our CDN
• Routes requests using geo-based load balancing
• Delivers it via standard HTTP with TLS and minimal latency

The result? A decentralized backend with centralized-level performance.

And because we own and operate our bare-metal infrastructure end-to-end, you’re not at the mercy of public gateways or centralized third-party CDN networks. You get full control, better uptime, and predictable speed.

Why It Matters

We’ve seen firsthand how performance translates to growth:

• Faster loading = more time spent browsing
• Lower latency = higher trust in your platform
• Reliable delivery = fewer support tickets, less churn
• Global access = wider reach for creators and collectors

If you're building an NFT platform in 2025, IPFS gateways are no longer a nice-to-have—they're essential infrastructure.

Let’s Make Your Marketplace Faster

NFTs are here to stay. But how they’re delivered is evolving fast. Filebase makes it simple to integrate IPFS into your existing stack without sacrificing speed, stability, or user experience.

➝ Ready to upgrade? Or if you want to learn more about Filebase IPFS Gateways, check out our recent blog IPFS Gateway Explained: How It Works