The Power of Content Identifiers (CIDs)

Pinata argues that content identifiers (CIDs) let data be portable, immutable and independent of any platform or file location. A CID combines a hash with metadata about how the content was hashed, encoding details and instructions for interpreting the data, and it can be retrieved through a local IPFS node, a public gateway, or a Pinata gateway. The article says CIDs enable linked datasets, such as NFT metadata JSON that points to other CIDs for images or video, and a file-first architecture in which Pinata has supported applications built without an external database.