Content Addressing | Lesson 5 of 5

Linking data together

One of the most important features of the web—whether centralized or decentralized—is linking. Every day on the centralized web, we link from text to images, from logos to homepages, and from emails to PDFs. Links tie resources together, convey meaning, and make the web awesomely interactive!

In this tutorial, we've explored how the cryptographic hash of a particular piece of data can be used as a link to retrieve that data from peers on the decentralized web. However, we can go even further and use CIDs to express data structures, conveying meaning about the relationships between various pieces of data.

In our Merkle DAG tutorial, you'll learn how content-addressed data structures enable us to build networks of interwoven data.