Multiformats is a collection of protocols that encode self-describing values for content-addressed data on the distributed web. The course begins with a tutorial introducing content addressing and cryptographic hashing, key building blocks of the decentralized web. In our next tutorial, we'll take a deep dive into the properties of CIDs (Content Identifiers), the unique labels used to point to data stored on distributed information systems including IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and IPLD. Along the way, we'll find lessons on the cryptographic hashing algorithms described by multihash, encoding systems described by multicodec, CID versions described by version prefixes, and base encoding methods described by multibase. We'll even explore the CID Inspector, a tool for breaking down CIDs into human-readable properties.
ProtoSchool's self-guided interactive tutorials are designed to introduce you to decentralized web concepts, protocols, and tools. The tutorials in this course on Multiformats offer a code-free experience with text-based lessons and multiple-choice quizzes. We recommend proceeding through the tutorials in the order in which they're presented.