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.
But who would? Anyone can run an archive.org style site but it takes a lot of work and money, so hardly anyone does. Not even Google does that anymore.
That's pretty much how IPFS works.
Did they ever solve the problem where requesting a file took ten minutes
There are probably mitigations they could come up with, but variable latency in actually obtaining files seems like it may be an inherent characteristic of requesting data by content hashes rather than specific locations.
Sounds like Hyphanet (aka Freenet).