As a music or movie enthusiast, you are familiar with BitTorrent. Torrent was a network of computers running software enabling them to exchange data. It was a peer-to-peer system in the early 2000s, and it changed the way people download data on the internet.
But as more and more people tried to use the network, Torrent could not monetize the massively popular service. Tron Foundation, the creator of Tron blockchain, bought the web in 2019 and launched a BitTorrent token cryptocurrency called BTT.
The token was designed to incentivize people to Torrent and solve the slow download speed and the diminishing availability of files over time.
The cooperation between Tron and BitTorrent Foundations will improve content delivery by bandwidths availability with the help of blockchain. Stay tuned to learn everything about this cryptocurrency before investing in it.
What is BitTorrent?
Bram Cohen created BitTorrent in 2001. It was long before the introduction of Bitcoin and blockchain technology. BitTorrent is a P2P protocol designed for transferring large files over the internet. It has been used to download video games, TV shows, movies, programs, and documentsfor years.
BitTorrent is one of the most widely known innovations in the world. In 2001 BitTorrent, as a peer-to-peer network, has been doing what Bitcoin did eight years later.
Bram Cohen created this project to provide a cheap way to swap large files over the internet. To use the network, it was necessary to download BitTorrent clients such as uTorrent.
How Does BitTorrent Work?
Bram Cohen used multiple peers instead of a single server, so people with lower bandwidth could join the network. In this process, large files or broken up into smaller pieces.
The first person who uploads a file is the seed, and those downloading the file are peers. After the download is finished, the peer becomes a seed.
Every seed holds a piece of the five. A cryptographic hash protects the small pieces of the file. The speed of downloading files depends mainly on the number of seeds across the network. It is interesting to know that Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, was inspired by BitTorrent. Here you are going to read a historical email archive by Satoshi Nakamoto Institute:
“For transferable proof of work tokens to have value, they must have a monetary value. To have monetary value, they must be transferred within an extensive network – for example, a file-trading network akin to BitTorrent.”
BitTorrent architecture
BitTorrent breaks up large files into small pieces and distributes them among its peers. Here we want to explain the architecture of the network.
Tracker
It is server software that coordinates the transfer files mind uses. The client sends a request regarding defining who wants to download. The tracker provides the client with a list of peers downloading the same file and their contact information.
Torrent file
Everything that has been transferred on the BitTorrent network has a.torrent extension. In this file, you can find encoded information, including the URL of the tracker, the name of the five, and hashes.
Seeder
The first downloader is the user that holds the whole file. The seeder continues uploading until a complete copy of the file is distributed to the downloaders. So every user that has a full copy of the file is called a seeder.
Leecher (the end-user)
Every user who does not have a complete copy of the file is a leecher. The leecher is the one who gets the list from the tracker and downloads the piece he is looking for. After downloading the piece, the leecher can distribute the piece and become a seeder.
What is a BTT Token?
After Tron Foundation bought BitTorrent in 2019, the BTT was created. The token rewards users who share their bandwidth with the network. On the other hand, downloaders can pay uploaders in BTT in token to have a faster download speed experience. The whole system is similar to Filecoin. They both act as decentralized storage systems that ensure security by distributing files across a distributed network.
