Advantages of a Decentralized Web Over Centralized Web (Content vs Location based addressing)

Centralized Web

On a centralized web we access data via URLs, these URLs provides information for locating and identifying a resources provided by a central authority

so when we do;

GET - https://cakes.com/blue-cake.png

...we are hereby requesting for blue-cake.png located at cakes.com, some of the few drawbacks of (getting a resource via location based addressing on a) centralized web is;

• We cannot verify the content of the resource
• We can have duplicates of this resource all across the internet
• We cannot truly verify the ownership of this particular resource
• We left to assume that the authority providing this resource is trustworthy

Decentralized Web

But on a decentralized web, data stored are identified by a cryptographic hash (which serves as a fingerprint signature for a resource), since a hash value can uniquely identify a resource, all attempts to store duplicates of a resource across network can be evaded.

therefore, when we do a

GET - https://decentralized.web/66FAC571933F185C3C4E4F03C01E76B66978DD13

we are hereby requesting for resource with the hash value 66FAC571933F185C3C4E4F03C01E76B66978DD13 at decentralized.web (with is a decentralized network of resource owning nodes, where the active node that owns this resource would provide it to the end user)

So on a decentralized web;

• We can verify the content of the resource
• We can verify the owner of the resource
• We can avoid data redundancy and duplicate data all over the internet

For more info about decentralized web :

• https://ipfs.io/#how For more info about Cryptographic:
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_function
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2