No, ipv6. Could have eliminated the need for DNS in a LAN. There is no reason to use hex other than maybe it would be easier for control planes to translate config to bytes/asic? But that's only when a config changes. Routing and forwarding uses bits and bytes, the hex is just one of many ways they could have chosen to represent the bytes. Defining prefixes in alphanumeric and how that translates to bytes could have been worked out. It could be something like 2601:hchsh:eevbo::home/64 for example
That could actually work for the host ID part of the address (not so much the network part). You could do it today with v6 just by extending getaddrinfo() (e.g. with an NSS plugin on Linux).
But L3 addresses aren't the place for naming. They're meant for computers, not humans. DNS supports names longer than 2-8 characters, descriptive hierarchies, multiple address families, other useful info types like SSH keys, and in general operates at the right layer for it.
v6 actually changed very little from v4. It more or less works in exactly the same way v4 does.