The BitTorrent acquisition by Justin Sun and the Tron (TRX) Foundation has left many crypto-enthusiasts guessing as to how the peer-to-peer file sharing platform will be used on/with the Tron blockchain. More so since the announcement of project Atlas by Justin Sun during the launch of the Tron Virtual Machine on the 30th of July this year.
The Project Atlas is meant to accomplish the following:
- Set up a development plan for the next 3 months with more to be announced by the end of August
- Explore the possibility of using the Tron protocol to improve the BitTorrent protocol to make the latter faster and lengthen the lifespan of BitTorrent swarms
- The Tron network will serve as the underlying protocol of the Secret Project to enable the 100+ million BitTorrent users to be part of the Tron ecosystem
- The integration of BitTorrent and TRON will offer new possibilities to global payment and settlement of online content
It is with the last part of the project Atlas that we are interested in. Its idea is similar to one expressed by Satoshi Nakamoto in an email back in November 2008. In the email, Satoshi wrote:
For transferable proof of work tokens to have value, they must have monetary value. To have monetary value, they must be transferred within a very large network – for example a file trading network akin to bittorrent.
Justin Sun also tweeted Satoshi’s email as can be seen below:
It seems that Satoshi Nakamoto himself was interested in joining our Atlas project since Nov. 03 2008. #TRON #TRX $TRX https://t.co/yF1tShQlQR https://t.co/GeVcFW2oH6
— Justin Sun🌞 (@justinsuntron) August 1, 2018
So how will the integration of BitTorrent and TRON offer new possibilities to global payment and settlement of online content?
One of the best possible ways that this will happen has been described by Steemit user Edicted when he stated the following:
Imagine a file sharing platform where leechers have to pay seeders! You now have a system where seeders get paid to seed. This dynamic then creates a balanced ecosystem where everyone is happy. Leechers get to leech for a nominal fee, and seeders get paid to seed. It’s a win-win for everyone and will create many 1:1 users who leech just as much as they seed, effectively breaking even. This is how file sharing should operate.
In an open letter to the Tron Community, Justin stated that there are currently no incentives for peers on the BitTorrent platform. With more details about project Atlas to be released in August, we might have to wait and see the full plan of Justin and the Tron Foundation with regards to integrating BitTorrent into the Tron Ecosystem.