From a dumb layman's perspective (mine), it seems as though the addressing issue has a very simple solution: to refer to some arbitrary file which is hosted by some known third-party (say, a video on YouTube), provide a link to it from your server and distribute the link to that link to others. When switching from YouTube to Vimeo, simply change the one link on your server and the link you distributed remains valid.
This also avoids the danger of hash collisions, although it is vulnerable to third-party hosts taking down the content (although again, there's not much cost to that. Just move the content elsewhere and change your redirect link).
With this method you do still have some server responsible for hosting the content rather than distributing that load, but that's actually a saving when looking at the storage load across the entire ecosystem.
It's a cool article and I really like the idea of content addressing instead of host addressing. I just feel like it's too divergent from the web as most people use it today (and I'm mildly concerned about malicious hash shenanigans), whereas the above method can be used and understood right now by many web users.
CDN's have made hosting pretty easy to scale from a low powered controller, the hard problem is working out when to invalidate the cache. Which is easily solved by.... another layer of merkle trees actually! It's Angela Merkel's all the way down
Or you can go one step further, use third party server to provide the link, because it's a burden to maintain your own server for many people. "Your server" is most likely somebody else's server anyway.
That will be google voice for url. The OP's method is use people's name as phone number.
Another problem with OP's method is that it's difficult to read for human, and very difficult to verify by eye. There is also no common parts for files organized in same hierarchy.
Hash collisions are really a non-issue. A collision in SHA-256 or larger spaces is less likely than being, say, struck by a meteorite twice in one day. When you get up to 384 and 512 bit hashes you could content address the entire Internet for thousands of years and likely never have a collision.
This also avoids the danger of hash collisions, although it is vulnerable to third-party hosts taking down the content (although again, there's not much cost to that. Just move the content elsewhere and change your redirect link).
With this method you do still have some server responsible for hosting the content rather than distributing that load, but that's actually a saving when looking at the storage load across the entire ecosystem.
It's a cool article and I really like the idea of content addressing instead of host addressing. I just feel like it's too divergent from the web as most people use it today (and I'm mildly concerned about malicious hash shenanigans), whereas the above method can be used and understood right now by many web users.