5 ms·

Tribler Invented 'Paid' Torrent Seeding Over a Decade Ago

73 points by okket 8y ago

synctext 8y ago
BBC News announcement of "bandwidth as a currency" from 2007: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6971904.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6971904.stm
realusername 8y ago
You also have other similar projects trying to mix Crypto & Bittorent like Vtorrent (http://vtorrent.info/ http://vtorrent.info/) and Upfiring (https://upfiring.com/ https://upfiring.com/). They seem both in a work in progress state.
- synctext 8y ago
  those initiatives do not seem open source and non-profit, like Tribler.
  - consp 8y ago
    Tribler is mostly "funded" (as Open Source) by the Delft University of Technology[1] as it is Johan Pouwelse's[2] group original idea as far as I know. Some courses and MSc/PHD assignments are implemented into the program. disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with them, though Pouwelse was one committee member at my thesis defense. [1]https://www.tribler.org/about.html https://www.tribler.org/about.html [2]https://www.tudelft.nl/ewi/over-de-faculteit/afdelingen/software-technology/distributed-systems/people/johan-pouwelse/ https://www.tudelft.nl/ewi/over-de-faculteit/afdelingen/soft...
devos50 8y ago
Tribler developer here. We have been working hard to mature and deploy this feature, and we are getting close to a fully operational token economy and decentralized marketplace. We have designed and implemented own scalable blockchain implementation, which we use to keep track of bandwidth transfers over time. The next step is to actively refuse connections to peers who have a low balance. Other than that, we are also actively working on many other scientific problems. One of these problems, is how to bootstrap trust in distributed systems. Numerous master students and PhD students have been working on this topic. For a complete list of our ongoing efforts, see https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki#current-items-under-active-development https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki#current-items-under-....
- pdimitar 8y ago
  Does the Tribler client have the feature of acting like a "super-node"? Namely I don't want to download anything right now, but I am OK to donate (rent?) my bandwidth and storage so people can upload to my machine (and download from it) while I am out for 6 hours doing chores and errands?
  - tribler 8y ago
    Yes, you can donate your bandwidth to others. This gives you bandwidth tokens. Tech details: https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/issues/3337 https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/issues/3337
    - pdimitar 8y ago
      I installed the app and still have no idea what to do. I would like to start an experiment where I import several Linux distribution torrents (that I already have) and have people download from me. I don't want to download them from scratch because I already have them. How do I do this? Or am I misreading the idea of the app? It seems to me that it is a BitTorrent client with extra features, am I wrong?
      - synctext 8y ago
        For seeding and creating a new channel with content: https://www.tribler.org/faq.html https://www.tribler.org/faq.html Bear with us, the documentation is still work in progress. If other Tribler users download from your channel, you get tokens. See https://www.tribler.org/howto.html https://www.tribler.org/howto.html
        pdimitar 8y ago
        Thank you, those helped.
        WhiteOwlLion 8y ago
        What are the tokens good for, getting priority bandwidth when you want content? Does the purchase of Bittorrent Inc by Tron affect your organization or strategy at all?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
throwaway83342 8y ago
You might want to read a bit through this 4 year old thread about Tribler: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8780313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8780313. Apart from the mountains of grant money and severly broken crypto ("set aside 'RSA without blinding'; this is RSA without padding.") which might or might not be fixed by now, I think the main point is that: "Tribler has a very long history of making high profile claims and never being able to follow through with actually usable software". And it seems they're doing it again, now even making clearly false claims. See this paper, published this summer: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01926 https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01926 They claim that this is about the "deployment" of an identity platform, but they only talk about several student projects during a blockchain course given by Pouwelse. The conclusion paragraph is really bordering on academic misconduct. They claim: "Thusly, we have created the new Dutch digital passport solution ready for global adoption", but there isn't a shred of evidence to back this up. There is no production ready system. There is some work being done by course students here (https://github.com/Tribler/trustchain-android https://github.com/Tribler/trustchain-android), but this is very far from "ready for global adoption". The documentation about ZKPs for example states "it was decided to leave zero knowledge proofs out of the application for now, until a better library comes around", while the paper claims that this is core part of the solution. They also say that they have "presented the ground work for a Self-Sovereign Identity solution which is in production in the Netherlands for use by citizens in the latter half of 2018". They are here framing two small pilots in two Dutch municipalities to be a production ready system. Those two pilots, by the way, have yet to materialize. (throwaway because I don't want to be ambushed about this later)
- synctext 8y ago
  > The conclusion paragraph is really bordering on academic misconduct. Sad you see it that way. For obvious reasons our Github code for Bittorrent-based token economy is separated from passport-grade identity system with experimental zero-knowledge proof system. > The documentation about ZKPs for example states [...] Those are old student projects; this is the repo and code implementing "Evaluating 2-DNF Formulas on Ciphertexts" by Dan Boneh, https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/papers/2dnf.pdf https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/papers/2dnf.pdf https://github.com/Tribler/py-ipv8/blob/master/ipv8/attestation/wallet/primitives/cryptosystem/boneh.py https://github.com/Tribler/py-ipv8/blob/master/ipv8/attestat... > two small pilots in two Dutch municipalities These pilots are indeed not moving fast enough for us, we're now using a notary-based approach. Governments don't innovate as fast as they themselves want. -Tribler founder.

73 points by okket 8y ago

BBC News announcement of "bandwidth as a currency" from 2007: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6971904.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6971904.stm

realusername 8y ago

You also have other similar projects trying to mix Crypto & Bittorent like Vtorrent (http://vtorrent.info/ http://vtorrent.info/) and Upfiring (https://upfiring.com/ https://upfiring.com/). They seem both in a work in progress state.

synctext 8y ago
those initiatives do not seem open source and non-profit, like Tribler.
- consp 8y ago
  Tribler is mostly "funded" (as Open Source) by the Delft University of Technology[1] as it is Johan Pouwelse's[2] group original idea as far as I know. Some courses and MSc/PHD assignments are implemented into the program. disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with them, though Pouwelse was one committee member at my thesis defense. [1]https://www.tribler.org/about.html https://www.tribler.org/about.html [2]https://www.tudelft.nl/ewi/over-de-faculteit/afdelingen/software-technology/distributed-systems/people/johan-pouwelse/ https://www.tudelft.nl/ewi/over-de-faculteit/afdelingen/soft...

devos50 8y ago

Tribler developer here. We have been working hard to mature and deploy this feature, and we are getting close to a fully operational token economy and decentralized marketplace. We have designed and implemented own scalable blockchain implementation, which we use to keep track of bandwidth transfers over time. The next step is to actively refuse connections to peers who have a low balance. Other than that, we are also actively working on many other scientific problems. One of these problems, is how to bootstrap trust in distributed systems. Numerous master students and PhD students have been working on this topic. For a complete list of our ongoing efforts, see https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki#current-items-under-active-development https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki#current-items-under-....

pdimitar 8y ago
Does the Tribler client have the feature of acting like a "super-node"? Namely I don't want to download anything right now, but I am OK to donate (rent?) my bandwidth and storage so people can upload to my machine (and download from it) while I am out for 6 hours doing chores and errands?
- tribler 8y ago
  Yes, you can donate your bandwidth to others. This gives you bandwidth tokens. Tech details: https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/issues/3337 https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/issues/3337
  - pdimitar 8y ago
    I installed the app and still have no idea what to do. I would like to start an experiment where I import several Linux distribution torrents (that I already have) and have people download from me. I don't want to download them from scratch because I already have them. How do I do this? Or am I misreading the idea of the app? It seems to me that it is a BitTorrent client with extra features, am I wrong?
    - synctext 8y ago
      For seeding and creating a new channel with content: https://www.tribler.org/faq.html https://www.tribler.org/faq.html Bear with us, the documentation is still work in progress. If other Tribler users download from your channel, you get tokens. See https://www.tribler.org/howto.html https://www.tribler.org/howto.html
      - pdimitar 8y ago
        Thank you, those helped.
      - WhiteOwlLion 8y ago
        What are the tokens good for, getting priority bandwidth when you want content? Does the purchase of Bittorrent Inc by Tron affect your organization or strategy at all?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

throwaway83342 8y ago

You might want to read a bit through this 4 year old thread about Tribler: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8780313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8780313. Apart from the mountains of grant money and severly broken crypto ("set aside 'RSA without blinding'; this is RSA without padding.") which might or might not be fixed by now, I think the main point is that: "Tribler has a very long history of making high profile claims and never being able to follow through with actually usable software". And it seems they're doing it again, now even making clearly false claims. See this paper, published this summer: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01926 https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01926 They claim that this is about the "deployment" of an identity platform, but they only talk about several student projects during a blockchain course given by Pouwelse. The conclusion paragraph is really bordering on academic misconduct. They claim: "Thusly, we have created the new Dutch digital passport solution ready for global adoption", but there isn't a shred of evidence to back this up. There is no production ready system. There is some work being done by course students here (https://github.com/Tribler/trustchain-android https://github.com/Tribler/trustchain-android), but this is very far from "ready for global adoption". The documentation about ZKPs for example states "it was decided to leave zero knowledge proofs out of the application for now, until a better library comes around", while the paper claims that this is core part of the solution. They also say that they have "presented the ground work for a Self-Sovereign Identity solution which is in production in the Netherlands for use by citizens in the latter half of 2018". They are here framing two small pilots in two Dutch municipalities to be a production ready system. Those two pilots, by the way, have yet to materialize. (throwaway because I don't want to be ambushed about this later)

synctext 8y ago
> The conclusion paragraph is really bordering on academic misconduct. Sad you see it that way. For obvious reasons our Github code for Bittorrent-based token economy is separated from passport-grade identity system with experimental zero-knowledge proof system. > The documentation about ZKPs for example states [...] Those are old student projects; this is the repo and code implementing "Evaluating 2-DNF Formulas on Ciphertexts" by Dan Boneh, https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/papers/2dnf.pdf https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/papers/2dnf.pdf https://github.com/Tribler/py-ipv8/blob/master/ipv8/attestation/wallet/primitives/cryptosystem/boneh.py https://github.com/Tribler/py-ipv8/blob/master/ipv8/attestat... > two small pilots in two Dutch municipalities These pilots are indeed not moving fast enough for us, we're now using a notary-based approach. Governments don't innovate as fast as they themselves want. -Tribler founder.