About

BitTorrent is a decentralized communications protocol and client software designed to distribute files across a peer network. It replaces traditional server-based downloads by enabling users to share file pieces among themselves, optimizing bandwidth and speeding up distribution .

History

BitTorrent protocol is currently one of the world's most prominent decentralized file-sharing protocols by the number of users. BitTorrent protocol enables users to reliably share or distribute large files to multiple other users simultaneously while reducing the reliance on any centralized server. It achieves this by leveraging every user's bandwidth to balance peer-to-peer content delivery across all other clients. Users of the BitTorrent network who want to download a file will find a "peer" that has the file or a portion of the file. To do this, they "announce" to a tracker, a specialized server that keeps a full record of all the files being shared in the system, or through the DHT, a distributed database of peers. Before the exchange of a file begins, the file itself is broken up into pieces. Clients (the BitTorrent software) advertise which pieces of the file their user has available. Those files are in turn uploaded by users who have them and downloaded by those who need them. Once someone has downloaded the files, they now have the option to "seed". This is the process of continuously letting others download the file, even though you do not need any portions of the file in return. The greater the number of people seeding, the faster the download usually takes. However, this process of seeding is entirely altruistic; there are no economic incentives or other benefits one will derive from doing this. Therefore, in order to create a more robust and resilient network, the BitTorrent team introduced the BitTorrent Token.

On July 24, 2018, the Tron Foundation completed the acquisition of BitTorrent and all its products. The BitTorrent Token was launched on the Tron blockchain as a TRC-10 token. They completed their private sale on November 1 2018, and their public sale on January 28 2019. The idea behind the token is to extend the services BitTorrent currently provides. The first use case for the BitTorrent token has been to speed up downloads by paying people who are sharing the file (seeders) for priority bandwidth through BitTorrent Speed. The BitTorrent team has also attempted to address one of the oldest flaws of its protocol, the lack of incentive to continue to seed or share files. The team plan to continue expanding the service offering and create a token-based economy that focuses on networking, bandwidth and storage resources on the existing BitTorrent network. They have most recently launched BitTorrent File System, a way for people to leverage their spare storage resources at home and allow others to rent out that storage space, similar to IPFS. Other plans in the future include livestream tipping in BTT, the purchase of downloadable media from creators, and creators' ability to crowdfund for their works.