How AIOZ Pin Works: Pinning, Gateways, and NFT Tools
AIOZ Pin is built on three parts, and its own docs name them directly: Files Pinning, NFT Management, and Premium Gateways. That structure has not changed since AIOZ first introduced the product, but the details under each part have, storage and bandwidth now have real published prices, the SDK has settled on specific method names, and AIOZ Pin now implements the same open pinning standard used across the industry. This article walks through what each part actually does today, with the exact numbers and method names pulled directly from AIOZ Pin's current documentation rather than the general feature descriptions you'll find in older overview posts.
TL;DR:
- AIOZ Pin pins files to IPFS, manages NFT asset + metadata uploads via a dedicated SDK method, and serves everything through gateways that skip public rate limits
- Storage and bandwidth are billed at a flat $20 per TB
- The API follows the same open pinning standard as most other providers, so none of it locks you in
What AIOZ Pin Actually Is
AIOZ Pin is a pay-as-you-go IPFS pinning service built on the AIOZ DePIN network. Per its own documentation, it is "the top layer of the AIOZ DePIN," providing IPFS storage on top of AIOZ's existing distributed node infrastructure. Everything the product does falls under one of its three documented components:
| Component | What it does |
|---|---|
| Files Pinning | Keeps your files persistently available on IPFS instead of subject to normal garbage collection |
| NFT Management | Pins an NFT's asset and metadata together through a dedicated SDK method |
| Premium Gateways | Serves pinned content through a private access point without public rate limits |
The rest of this article covers each one with the current technical detail.
Files Pinning: How Persistence Actually Works
IPFS nodes periodically run garbage collection, clearing data that isn't marked as important to free up space. Pinning is what stops that from happening to your files. AIOZ Pin's docs describe this as guaranteeing "long-term storage and accessibility," but there's no published SLA or uptime percentage behind that word. What's actually documented is the mechanism: your data gets replicated as independent, CID-addressed copies across AIOZ's node network, and nodes submit proofs confirming they're actually storing what they claim to store. That's a real technical safeguard, worth understanding on its own terms rather than taking "guaranteed" at face value.
One number worth being precise about: AIOZ Pin's marketing describes "unlimited pinned files," but its billing page tells a more specific story. The first 40,000 pinned files are free, and each additional 1,000 costs $0.10. There's no hard technical ceiling, so "unlimited" isn't wrong, but it isn't free past that point either.
Premium Gateways: Public Access vs a Private Lane
Every file pinned to IPFS is reachable through public gateways, open HTTP endpoints that let anyone retrieve a CID, subject to the rate limits that keep public infrastructure usable for everyone. AIOZ Pin's Premium Gateways give a project its own private entry point instead, one that isn't subject to those public rate limits and supports a custom domain. If your application depends on IPFS content loading reliably for real users, that's the practical difference: a public gateway can throttle you during a traffic spike, a dedicated one is yours alone.
AIOZ Pin also layers gateway-side image optimization on top of this, resize, format, and quality transforms applied through URL query parameters rather than re-uploading edited copies. That's covered in full in AIOZ's dedicated image optimization and dedicated gateways posts if you want the deeper technical walkthrough.
NFT Management: What pinNft() Actually Does
NFT Management is one of AIOZ Pin's three named components, not a bolt-on feature. In practice, it's a specific SDK method: client.pinNft() in the @aioznetwork/aioz-pin-sdk Node.js package, which pins an NFT's asset and its metadata together in a single call, so you don't end up with orphaned metadata pointing at an asset that was never actually pinned (or the reverse). The same package also exposes pinFilesToIPFS({filePaths, options}) and pinFolderToIPFS({depth, sourcePath, options}) for general file and directory pinning (AIOZ Pin's own quick-start guide writes the first one as the singular pinFileToIPFS, but the actual published SDK, version 1.0.1, ships the plural, array-based pinFilesToIPFS, so that's the name to use in real code), plus pinByHash() for pinning content you've already got a CID for. There's a separate CLI tool on the AIOZNetwork GitHub org for the same operations from the command line: pinning login --key ... --secret ..., pinning pin --file, pinning list-pins, pinning unpin --id=....
Content addressing is what makes this useful for NFTs specifically: a file's CID is derived from its content, so any change to the file produces a different CID. That gives you a built-in tamper check for metadata integrity that a regular URL never had.
Pricing at a Glance
AIOZ Pin bills storage and bandwidth separately, both at a flat $20 per TB per month, prorated daily against a wallet balance funded with AIOZ tokens. There are no bundled tiers, you pay for what you use. Combined with the 40,000 free pinned files mentioned above, that's the full shape of the cost model. A deeper cost breakdown and real comparison against bundled-plan competitors is coming in a dedicated pricing article, this is the number you need to know going in.
Built on Open Standards, Not a Walled Garden
AIOZ Pin's Pinning API implements the IPFS Pinning Service API standard, the same specification used by most other pinning providers. That matters in a practical way: code written against that standard needs an endpoint and API key swap to move between providers, not a rewrite. If you're evaluating AIOZ Pin against something else, you're not locking yourself into a proprietary integration to try it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are AIOZ Pin's three main components? Files Pinning, NFT Management, and Premium Gateways, per AIOZ Pin's own documentation. Files Pinning keeps content persistently available, NFT Management pins NFT assets and metadata together through a dedicated SDK method, and Premium Gateways serve content through a private, non-rate-limited access point.
Does AIOZ Pin guarantee my files stay online forever? AIOZ Pin's marketing uses "guaranteed" language, but there's no published SLA or uptime percentage. What's actually documented is the mechanism behind it: data is replicated as independent CID-addressed copies, and nodes submit proofs of storage.
What does AIOZ Pin's NFT Management feature actually do? It pins an NFT's asset and its metadata together in one call, through the pinNft() method in AIOZ Pin's Node.js SDK, instead of requiring you to pin each piece separately and hope they stay in sync.
How much does AIOZ Pin cost? Storage and bandwidth are both billed at a flat $20 per TB per month, prorated daily. The first 40,000 pinned files are free, then $0.10 per additional 1,000.
Can I switch between AIOZ Pin and another pinning provider without rewriting my code? Largely yes for the core pinning calls, since AIOZ Pin implements the same IPFS Pinning Service API standard used by most other providers. You'll still need to update provider-specific features and your API key.
What's the difference between a public and premium IPFS gateway on AIOZ Pin? A public gateway is open to anyone and subject to shared rate limits. AIOZ Pin's Premium Gateways give a project a private, custom-domain access point that isn't subject to those limits.
Related Reading
- What Is IPFS? The Ultimate Guide To Decentralized Storage - background on the underlying protocol this article assumes
- AIOZ Pin Dedicated Gateways: Simple, High-Performance IPFS Access - a full walkthrough of the Premium Gateways feature covered above
- Image Optimization on AIOZ Pin: Smarter Image Delivery from IPFS - detail on the gateway-side image transforms mentioned above
- AIOZ Pin vs Pinata: IPFS Pinning Service Compared 2026 - how AIOZ Pin's pricing and features above stack up against the market leader
References
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