Review on BitTorrent by Danh Huỳnh Ngọc Công
BitTorrent - The Leap of the Giant
If you are are an active Internet user, a freedom lover, and an evangelist at the same time, there is a high chance that you would know about BitTorrent. For anyone who has no idea, BitTorrent is a protocol facilitating the parties that want to transfer data in an untrusted manner during a long period. This protocol issues a TRC-10 token named BTT to power its native economy and maintain its sustainability. At the time of writing, BitTorrent is known as one of the most popular projects in blockchain industry. But is it really a good project or a good investment? I will go through some critical factors about it to draw my own conclusion.
Idea
BitTorrent success story has proven that this is one of the best apps to support heavy file-sharing activities by enhancing the engagement of the peers (network participants). The client has been serving astoundingly 1 billion users around the globe helping them send and receive massive-sized files. In 2019, BitTorrent reshapes itself into a new version with the integration of blockchain technology to incentivize users and expand the protocol's use cases (such as browsing distributed applications, tipping for good data, paying for additional services, etc. ). The idea of this product is originally good and even become better now thanks to another technology.
Team
Some of the core team members may stand as the backbone for the quality of BitTorrent. These people improve the essential aspects of the upgraded protocol. Let’s take a flash look on some noticeable members:
- Justin Sun (CEO): Top searching results on the internet may point out some of his famous scandals such as whitepaper plagiarism, or abusive social media marketing, etc. However, there are a lot of factors making him an iconic entrepreneur. He is one of the best students of Jack Ma (a Chinese billionaire), a former developer of blockchain giants, and the founder of Tron blockchain (a blockchain that aims to decentralize the web and it is operating in an awesome way). The acquisition of BitTorrent is claimed to be his next success as it fills the big gap in the ecosystem of Tron blockchain
- Steve Heinrich (Controller): Steve is a CAP who has worked diversely in many positions in different fields such as finance, accounting, and operations. At BitTorrent, he ensures the efficiency of operation, human resources, containing cost, accounting, and IT systems
- Trevor Baxter (Head of Analytics): Trevor used to work at many core positions in companies such as Retail Next, Randstad, or Bose. He has been a proficient analyst who can work with a wide range of coding languages and data analytics software. He focuses mostly on data and promoting a winning company culture.
We all can see that the leaders are the big names who have worked with gigantic companies and projects. I’m confident about the professionalism and the efficiency of them. They have already been successful on the project, so all they can do is to keep moving forward and go more advanced.
Economics
The implementation of blockchain technology into BitTorrent marks the emergence of its native economy where participants are encouraged to share network resources, bandwidth, and storage resources to receive BTT tokens. Through the delegate-proof-of-stake algorithm of Tron blockchain, users who become the validators that maintain the healthy status of the activities get rewarded fairly. When decentralized applications on BitTorrent are published, BTT will act as a currency as they are paid by users to get the access. This model gives the added value and the incentives to possess and hold BTT, making the users more active, attract the attention, and bring about some significantly competent selling points. However, there will not be many profits with the users who contribute a moderate amount of resources. Plus, the model is not an innovative one as it is popular with many projects these days which means BitTorrent will have to compete with the more effective models in the future. What’s more, some of the services can be paid with other coins/tokens. This should not be a thing unless service fees paid with BTT can be cheaper than the other methods.
Products
BitTorrent already has a successful application that is used by a million people every day. We can download it directly within seconds on BitTorrent website as an extension or a desktop app. It is fast to download but it requires the installation of Avast Free Antivirus program which makes the client very doubtful (are there any other additional apps?). When using the app, ads may appear constantly if the version is basically free. Other versions need to be paid but come with many offerings. During my usage, I was satisfied with how fast and convenient the client is; however, I cannot really tell the big differences between BitTorrent and other totally-free torrents. I hope there will be many changes once the product comes to another stage.
Conclusion: BitTorrent is a strong project with many big pluses such as an existing product, a strong team, great technology, and a good reputation. I still have some questions about the efficiency of its economic model, the download bundle, the uniqueness, and some other small issues. Maybe the reason for the incompletion is that the project has just been moved to another stage. From my own perspective, the project has a bright future.
Pros
- Excellent product
- Product incentives
- Experienced team
- Good idea
- Good economics
- Good reputation
Cons
- Limited features on basic products
- Shady bundle installation
- Ad floods on free version
- Better alternatives torrents
New products
Comments (2)
September 28, 2019
@Luis Torrent is popular actually. The alternatives should not be always less advanced (you can look at how Epic overtakes Steam). And yeah, I mentioned that the business model is not the top one and will become outdated one day
September 27, 2019
The only problem is that currently people are not aware of this type of services. It can offer great alternatives but there are technical data that they do not offer, besides being honest, the BTT token is not useful.
