Torrents on blockchain— How blockchain can make it better

web3abhi
3 min readJul 16, 2018
A human peer to peer network

While Tinkering around blockchain technology for more than an year now, I tend to hear a lot, people claiming that cryptocurrencies are scam. That blockchains are practically useless and have no real world applications.

Off course this is not the case, as anyone who studied this technology deeply will tell you.

Everyone heard of few applications and use cases for blockchains which are soon likely to change the world. I am however, starting this series to discuss some different ideas I came across, which are not effectively under implementation yet, but can really create a huge difference.

File Sharing Protocol

Problem -
Companies and software services whether small or big, from likes of microsoft and linux foundation to small companies,

All of them want to share files with peoples, their audience or customers. But they often experience the problem of varying load on their server which cripple their infrastructure.

For example, as Linux is an open source freely distributed software which hosts millions of downloads per day, from various OS to drivers and other software, their servers often see huge load and only provides a limited amount of bandwidth to downloads.

As a customer to Linux, I have to suffer from slow downloading speed even when I have good bandwidth internet.

Existing solutions -
BitTorrent protocol as a peer to peer file sharing services act as a solution to provide a distribution tool but it have some several shortcomings like -

As soon as a file enters into bittorrent protocol, it is converted into small packets of data with consequtive order in bittorrent header, this make the file prone to be corruptible in case of packet loss.

The main premise of bittorrent protocol is the seeding of files by individual valenteers, which is not always possible due to general lack of interests
Seeders can be choosy and favour one file over others.

Leechers have no restrictions or boundation toward the files or distributors
This protocol completely destroys the privacy of data involved.

So I how can I distribute my files to my audience ???

Hell yeah, share ‘em up

Proposed Solution

A improved Torrent protocol, based on blockchain consensus.
This is an improved version on top of torrent protocols where a token system is integrated.

Seeder can earn tokens and hence this will increase seeding drastically
Leechers will spend tokens to download files and hence they will more likely seed in return for compensating the process

File distributors can charge their customers directly in form of tokens
Files will be converted to tokens but this time, the packets will be encrypted and decrupted on both ends hence providing a privacy and sharing rights to file.

This will also remove the sense of prioritization for seeders as all packets will be same for them.
Packet size will be made constant and standardized to provide proper encryption.
These packets will be transmitted while recording their hashes as transactions on the chain.

This hashing and encryption will give distributors absolute rights on sharing of files while ruling out the possibilities of fraud and pilgrims.

This will provide users with optimal download speed and remove the need to own hefty servers to provide files to download to public.

Get in Touch —

I can be personally reached directly on twitter 😀😀

Give some 👏 if you find this useful. Bye 🖐

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