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IPFS CIDs Stored in Content Hash Record
IPFS CIDs Stored in Content Hash Record
Rasmus (cthulu.eth) avatar
Written by Rasmus (cthulu.eth)
Updated over a week ago

The string of letters and numbers you see in an IPFS link is its "Content Identifier" or CID.

IPFS has two types of CID's:


CID version 0

When IPFS was first designed it used base 58-encoded multihashes as the content identifiers that looked like this:

QmQbeKEi4XJ9yLL2nyFKxpuPyrfqmHBGtRj3EhWcSvQaSD

Many applications and services still use these by default, but the format is close to being replaced.

CID version 1

The IPFS project will switch to CIDv1 as the new default in the near future.

IPFS developed CID version 1 which is a far more flexible approach, and will become the IPFS default, that looks like this:

bafybeibbr2r6b3hd3p5jggobmgacm7f4523ijyza364szdeyrw3b4uy7ei

CID v1 contains some leading identifiers that clarify exactly which representation is used, along with the content-hash itself. These include:

  • A multibase prefix, specifying the encoding used for the remainder of the CID

  • A CID version identifier, which indicates which version of CID this is

  • A multicodec identifier, indicating the format of the target content — it helps people and software to know how to interpret that content after the content is fetched

These leading identifiers also provide forward-compatibility, supporting different formats to be used in future versions of CID.

Troubleshooting

I've set my CID but a different CID shows!

When you set a CIDv0 on your ENS name it will be converted to a CIDv1, so if you enter a CID that looks like this:
QmQbeKEi4XJ9yLL2nyFKxpuPyrfqmHBGtRj3EhWcSvQaSD

Then once it's set on your ENS name it will look like this:
bafybeibbr2r6b3hd3p5jggobmgacm7f4523ijyza364szdeyrw3b4uy7ei

For example, if you edited the Content Hash record for your ENS name and set it to:

ipfs://QmQbeKEi4XJ9yLL2nyFKxpuPyrfqmHBGtRj3EhWcSvQaSD

You would see your record reformatted to the CIDv1 version of the IPFS hash:

ipfs://bafybeibbr2r6b3hd3p5jggobmgacm7f4523ijyza364szdeyrw3b4uy7ei






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