IPNS records have a fairly short expiry, so you have to keep republishing them. This also keeps the DHT from getting overly full of records that nobody is using

IPNS records have a fairly short expiry, so you have to keep republishing them. This also keeps the DHT from getting overly full of records that nobody is using anymore, but does mean that a node with the private key must be kept online. They're working on improving this situation; here's a discussion on the topic: https://discuss.ipfs.io/t/confusion-about-ipns/1414/4 https://discuss.ipfs.io/t/confusion-about-ipns/1414/4