Bittorrent, the popular peer-to-peer file sharing protocol, has released their own cryptocurrency to incentivize sharing among its users.
BitTorrent (BTT) allows content creators to connect with their audience, earn and spend digital currency without a middleman. By connecting the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network to the TRON blockchain, we offer a new experience to over 100M+ users.
BITTORRENT WEBSITE
What is Bittorrent?
In case you haven’t heard of Bittorrent, they describe themselves as –
A peer-to-peer protocol, that facilitates the transfer of large, highly demanded files, eliminating the need for a trusted central server.
BITTORENT WEBSITE
This was invented by Bram Cohen in 2001, and is a popular way for organisations online to distribute large files without hosting the files on a central server. Basically, most files on the internet are stored on a server. The company has to pay for the bandwidth and storgae of these servers. By using the Bittorrent protocol, the company can offer the files without the need for a server.
Peer-to-peer sharing works rather simply. A person who has the file starts sharing or “seeding” it online. Another person or “leecher” will request the download of the file. Usually, there are more than two peers involved. If there are hundred peers sharing, downloads can complete super fast as the protocol collects small amounts of the files from different peers and assembles it into one file after completion. This is a decentralized approach to file sharing.
The issue with this approach was the lack of incentive for a sharer or seeder to keep sharing the file. After all the internet connection bill used to send the file is paid by the sharer. Bittorrent hopes to solve this problem with BTT or Bittorrent Token.
What is BTT?
Bittorrent Token is a cryptocurrency introduced to the market by Bittorrent Inc. Interestingly, it is not based on the popular ethereum platform but rather is built on the TRON blockchain. The TRC-10 tokens will be used a currency exchange between the peers to incentivize file sharing on the Bittorrent protocol.
By partnering with TRON, the Bittorrent Inc. hopes to promote greater use of the Bittorrent Protocol by using TRC-10 tokens. These are cryptocurrencies that can be exchanged on the platform or traded for other cryptocurrencies. The BTT is traded in the following exchanges – Binance, Okex, Bittrex, Huobi, HitBTC, Bithumb, BitFinex, UPbit, KuCoin, Coinspot, CoinexMarket, Coinex, AnyBit among others.
Bittorrent Speed
BitTorrent swarms suffer from structural inefficiencies which frequently lead to the premature deterioration or death of swarms. Due to upload/download speed asymmetry, files frequently complete downloading long before a peer has been able to upload an equivalent number of bytes. Once the downloading peer has the entire file, there is no economic incentive to continue to make the file available to other downloaders through seeding. That means users leave swarms without uploading as much data as they have downloaded, which results in BitTorrent swarms not lasting as long as they need to.
BTT WHITE PAPER
To solve this problem, users will be compensated with BTT if they keep seeding their files from future downloads. This will ensure that the file will remain available for download for a longer period of time. For those who wish to have priority file download speeds can increase it by exchanging BTT. This is called Bittorrent Speed and it has been integrated into the Bittorrent Protocol.
