BitTorrent is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and while its technology is primarily associated with piracy, it played a significant role in the creation of Spotify, Netflix, and even Bitcoin.
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It was the good old early 2000s, and the geeks of that era used the medieval internet to stare at their computers downloading low-quality songs and movies for hours.
File downloads were executed from central servers, which became increasingly slow and expensive as more users accessed them, or via direct connections between end users authenticated by an intermediary server, as was the case with Napster.
The fact that the source file was stored on a single server or computer created bottlenecks that were very difficult and expensive to resolve—and that is where torrents came in.
Torrent technology splits the file into small pieces, each receiving its own identifying signature. The owner of the original file sends one of the pieces to each of the other users, and every user who receives a piece immediately begins sharing it.
In the early days, BitTorrent servers still had to act as a central hub storing the locations of all the file pieces. Later, this function was also decentralized to the network itself, with all computers on the network communicating with one another to build a list of piece locations.
This completely eliminated the need for a central server, as all users simultaneously upload and download data from one another. A small text file contains a list of the file pieces and their signatures, allowing users to join the network and begin downloading almost immediately.
The technology also features a reward mechanism that allocates download speed to each user based on the upload speed they contribute to the community. This prevents a scenario where users download at high speeds while uploading almost nothing.
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Although it is a legitimate technology, it quickly became the number one method for distributing pirated content on the internet. No law enforcement agency in the world could handle millions of users sharing data directly with one another. Left with no choice, creators were forced to develop solutions like Spotify and Netflix, where subscription models and ease of use ultimately marginalized the consumption of pirated content.
The rise of the cybersecurity industry was another catalyst. Torrents became a convenient vector for distributing malware, which further encouraged users to transition to legal, secure subscriptions.
This technology has also been utilized by tech giants to save millions of dollars in cloud costs. Facebook, Twitter, and Blizzard have used similar technology to rapidly distribute updates across tens of thousands of servers and to millions of players worldwide. With every point on the network acting as a communication node, the need for expensive central servers was eliminated.
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The profound importance of the torrent is reflected in another aspect: serving as a proof of concept for a decentralized internet.
Today, this paradigm is known as Web3. At its core is the idea that users control their content and share it directly with one another, rather than storing it on the servers of tech giants that control the data. In this way, Web3 is essentially an extension of BitTorrent's file-sharing concept.
Bitcoin relies on the same principle to create a decentralized currency. Instead of transactions being verified on the servers of a central bank, verification takes place on the network itself, powered by all of its users.
The use of torrents as a tool for piracy is steadily declining, but its technological impact will stay with us for many years to come.
In the image: How a torrent works | Wikipedia
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👋 Hi, I'm Shlomo Strauss and my posts are not written by artificial intelligence.
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