Re:Willow Protocol
by ComputerGuru on Thursday January 18, 2024 @09:16PM
(#39050839)
It’s a protocol, not an implementation. If you say your implementation of the protocol says objects are defined by their hash, then your implementation can also assert that the hash of the retrieved file matches the hash you looked it up with^ (which you should do in your library/app regardless of what the protocol says will be returned, though ideally your protocol would define some sort of merkle tree or whatever to verify the hash piecemeal).
^ which you, by definition, already have
It's a superset in that sense but not a superset in another sense.
In a content-addressable system, if I post a link to another piece of content by hash, then no one can ever substitute a different piece of content. Like, if I reference the hash of a news article, no one can edit that article after the fact without being detected. This is a super-useful feature of CAS that is not a feature of NAS. Other implications:
* I can review a piece of software, deem that it's not malware in my opinion, and link to the software by hash. No one can substitute a piece of malware without detection.
* Suppose you get a link from a trusted source. Now you can download a copy of the underlying content from any untrusted source, without a care about authentication or trusted identities. This describes BitTorrent.