Author: Gregory Maxwell 2013-04-29 03:36:49
Published on: 2013-04-29T03:36:49+00:00
In an email conversation, John Dillon suggested using BitTorrent to solve the problem of offering up storage capacity, as it already has a DHT support. However, this idea was met with several objections. Firstly, tracker-less torrents have been found to not work well in practice and can be susceptible to DOS attacks. Secondly, adding structure to the network for nodes to find each other would complicate the process and require extra software. Additionally, BitTorrent is often blocked on networks and is associated with illicit copying. Instead, it was suggested that the software have user overridable defaults based on free disk space to make contributing painless. Using Bitcoin to bootstrap the Bittorrent DHT could potentially make it more reliable, but may also result in commercial services targeting the Bitcoin network to poison the bittorrent DHT. Integration with BitTorrent would also raise concerns about network-exposed attack surface. It was concluded that it would be simpler to add the ability to add ranges to address messages, revamp the address message format, and support I2P peers rather than integrating with BitTorrent.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T16:50:10.878713+00:00