FYI: Named Things with Hashes

Just came across this spec:

*Abstract:

*
[[

   This document defines a set of ways to identify a thing (a digital
   object in this case) using the output from a hash function.  It
   specifies a new URI scheme for this purpose, a way to map these to
   HTTP URLs, and binary and human-speakable formats for these names.
   The various formats are designed to support, but not require, a
   strong link to the referenced object, such that the referenced object
   may be authenticated to the same degree as the reference to it.  The
   reason for this work is to standardise current uses of hash outputs
   in URLs and to support new information-centric applications and other
   uses of hash outputs in protocols.
]]


http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6920

This may be a useful way to name things in a portable way.  And perhaps
have a distributed database of key value pairs, using read / write
technology.  The advantage of distributing things cryptographically (as
demonstrated for example by bitcoin) is that you also distribute trust away
from a trusted third party model, additionally you need to incur the
overhead of an HTTP request when performing some operations.