The technology is still in its infancy unfortunately, so there's no way the web could have been based on it, but I think content-addressing is the long-term play. If I click a link, there are some cases where I want the server to respond with a fresh response just for me (e.g. a website showing the weather). But often I just want whatever content was linked to (e.g. a webpage explaining a math content). In the latter case, it would be nice if the link had a hash of the content in it, and 3rd parties could host copies to keep the link working even if the original operator stopped existing.

That's pretty much how IPFS works.