Before looking at how we can make use of each of the two alternatives for decentralized storage in detail, we'll first briefly look at their main similarities and differences.
The aim of each project is to provide both a general decentralized storage layer and a content delivery protocol. To do so, both technologies use peer-to-peer networks composed of client nodes, which are able to store and retrieve content. The files that are stored on each of the platforms are addressed by the hashes of their content.
A result of being able to store files is that both IPFS and Swarm are able to store and serve the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript of applications built on top of them, and can therefore take the place of traditional server backends.
For files that are too large to be stored whole, both projects offer a model whereby larger files can be served in chunks, much the...