Addressing on the Decentralized Web

Note: This document is work in progress and largely incomplete.

Authors:

• Lars Gierth <[email protected]>

Table of contents:

• Introduction
• The precarious web
  • Link competition and link rot
  • The addressing rift
• DWeb Addressing
• Namespaces
  • /ipfs -- immutable data
  • /ipns -- mutable pointers
  • Addressing data from other content-addressed systems
  • Network addressing
• Interoperability
  • DWeb Addressing with HTTP
  • ipfs:// and ipns:// URL schemes
  • dweb: URI scheme
  • Content Security Policy / Origins
• Appendix
  • DWeb Maturity Model
  • FAQ
  • Implementations
  • Future Work
  • Related work

Introduction

Location-based addressing is a centralizing vector on the web. It lets links rot and drives copies of content into mutual competition.

This document describes a content-based addressing model which provides permanent links that don't rot and are cryptographically verifiable. The result is a more cooperative, resilient, and performant web.