Following the "fine tradition" of TRON? IPFS founder accuses BTFS of plagiarism

Original title: "Juan & Justin Sun quarreled with each other, V God supported Juan! "
Written by: FILPool Mine Brother

On April 15, the official Twitter account of BitTorrent, which was acquired by Justin Sun, announced that in order to convey its ideas and vision, BTFS will rebrand and unveil a new logo. In an instant, it was as if a stone had stirred up a thousand waves.

On April 16, Juan retweeted and commented: "It seems that the lie of just forking our code and changing the name to make it their own is not enough. In addition to copying and pasting our papers in bulk and then piecing them together illogically to deceive investors, Tron can't even make an original logo!"

BTFS and IPFS logo comparison

Juan continued to comment: "BitTorrent was once a great technology, and the emergence of our distributed storage projects is mostly due to BT's innovation and leadership, but now BT has become a tool for some people to make money, which is a pity."

"I wonder if anyone still adheres to the original ideals of BitTorrent downloading. I can't imagine anyone who has ever worked on p2p downloading being able to tolerate this kind of garbage."

Juan’s candor triggered a quick response from Justin Sun and his PR team:

BitTorrent officially responded on Twitter: "It's not cool to blame BitTorrent. We have been perfecting our technology over the past few decades. IPFS should be grateful to BitTorrent for paving the way for others as a leader in this industry. We should live in harmony."

Justin Sun also fired back: "Are you serious? Does the hexagonal pattern belong to you? Take a look at your own first!"

“You are the one who copied and pasted BitTorrent’s technology, and we said nothing about it. Because we believe in solidarity instead of blaming each other. And now you are standing on the moral high ground, pointing fingers at people who are working hard. Are you cool up there? What have you done yourself?”

To most outsiders, this century's biggest news seems to have fallen into a cycle of each person having their own reasons. Therefore, as an outsider, the views of V God are undoubtedly fair and important.

After the BTFS official Twitter account released the announcement, Vitalik Buterin commented: To be honest, it was really painful to read this tweet, it was like watching a puppet speaking: something you grew up knowing and loving for 15 years, but now looks like an appendage of Justin Sun’s dictatorship.

I believe everyone is familiar with BitTorrent, so why hasn't BT developed efficiently?

What is BitTorrent?

In fact, the global distributed storage network is not a new product in recent years. The three most famous ones are BitTorrent, Kazaa, and Napster. These systems still have hundreds of millions of active users around the world, especially BitTorrent clients. Now the BitTorrent network still has more than 10 million nodes uploading data every day (I wonder if you still remember the scene of sharing movie and game resources on the campus network IPv6).

So, what is BitTorrent?

BitTorrent (BT for short, commonly known as BitTorrent, BT download, etc.) is an Internet-based file transfer protocol. Bram Cohen independently wrote the BT core program code in 2002. BT can achieve peer-to-peer file sharing. It uses a content distribution protocol that shares large files (such as a movie or TV show) through an efficient software distribution system and peer-to-peer technology, and enables each user to provide upload services like a network redistribution node.

BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen

How does BitTorrent work?

According to the BitTorrent protocol, the file publisher will generate a .torrent file based on the file to be published, which is also called a seed file or "seed". A torrent file is essentially a text file, which contains two parts: Tracker information and file information. Tracker information mainly includes the address of the Tracker server required for BT download and the settings for the Tracker server. The file information is generated based on the calculation of the target file, and the calculation result is encoded according to the B encoding rules in the BitTorrent protocol.

Its main principle is to virtually divide the downloadable file into blocks of equal size. The block size must be an integer power of 2k (due to virtual block division, no block files are generated on the hard disk), and write the index information and hash verification code of each block into the .torrent file; therefore, the .torrent file is the "index" of the downloaded file.

To download the file content, the downloader needs to first obtain the corresponding .torrent file, and then use the BT client software to download it. When downloading, the BT client first parses the .torrent file to obtain the Tracker address, and then connects to the Tracker server. The Tracker server responds to the downloader's request and provides the downloader with the IP addresses of other downloaders (including publishers), and the downloader then connects to other downloaders.

After reading the introduction and working principle of BT, do you think that BT and IPFS are similar in some aspects? In fact, BitTorrent technology still has a place in the relationship genealogy of IPFS.

Why didn't BT become popular quickly?

No matching business model

According to statistics, in October 2010, a survey conducted by Sandvine, a well-known Canadian network broadband management company, showed that in North America alone, the BT protocol accounted for an average of 53.3% of upload traffic per day. In Latin America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region, the BT protocol also dominates traffic.

However, with the popularity of 4G, online content service providers, and cloud storage, the demand for BT downloads has decreased. In 2015, BT download traffic accounted for only 5% of the total traffic in North America.

We all know that the success of something depends on "the right time, the right place, and the right people". BitTorrent emerged in the early days of the Internet. At that time, the Internet had to solve the problem of efficient interconnection and information transmission. The HTTP protocol is already good enough in this regard. Its combination with the browser is the best partner for Internet data transmission and display.

Poor user experience

In addition to the business model that has yet to be explored, BT downloads have another fatal pain point.

For old users of BT download, the user experience is not good, especially the rare file sources and download speed still bother many users. Because in the actual use of BT download, most users do not have the habit of seeding after downloading the file.

"If no one plants trees, how can we enjoy the shade?" Without a large number of users planting trees, the resources of the BT network will become less and less, and the transmission speed will become slower and slower. Users who need to download will still need to experience the process of waiting for the download to be completed, and the user experience will inevitably become worse and worse.

In fact, BT needs an effective incentive system to completely solve a series of problems such as small data reserves, unstable data storage, and slow data transmission speed.

What are the advantages of IPFS's rapid development?

IPFS is a content-addressed, versioned, peer-to-peer hypermedia transmission protocol that allows participants in the network to store, retrieve and transmit verifiable data to each other.

Unlike BT's declining market share, the nodes and data storage capacity of the IPFS network are not only increasing day by day, but also have received olive branches from top capitalists and major giants. So, what are the advantages of IPFS's rapid development?

Time: HTTP’s shortcomings are evident

After more than a decade of rapid development, the Internet's data storage capacity has shown an exponential growth every year. In 2011, the total amount of global data reached 0.7ZB (1ZB equals 1 trillionGB), and in 2016 it reached 16.1ZB, a 20-fold increase compared to 2011. By 2025, global data is expected to grow to a staggering 163ZB.

However, the Internet based on the HTTP protocol has long been unable to bear the influx of data. The data transmission speed is getting slower and slower, the cost of data storage and transmission is getting higher and higher, the frequency of attacks is getting higher and higher, and the number of cloud crashes is increasing. These are all sending us the signal that the Internet urgently needs reform.

IPFS, as a content-addressed distributed storage system, was created to address the shortcomings of HTTP. IPFS stores data by creating hash deduplication for data block content. The data storage cost and broadband transmission cost will be significantly reduced by 60%. It has the characteristics of fast download speed, more economical storage and transmission costs, sustainable data storage, and safer distributed storage.

Today, 5G is within reach, and technologies such as artificial intelligence will also help usher in the arrival of Web 3.0, the era of the Internet of Everything. By then, the demand for connecting to the Internet will grow wildly at an alarming rate. It is foreseeable that the method of storing data by building a centralized data cluster under the HTTP mode cannot cover all the huge amounts of data. In order for the new wave of the Internet to bring us more innovation and experience, a Web 3.0 built on IPFS is imperative.

Advantages of location: Filecoin has a significant incentive effect

Essentially, in order to enable the network to spread and develop rapidly and efficiently, IPFS needs to transform the original on-demand downloading of P2P software into long-term storage of resources, and long-term storage with high quality assurance. Otherwise, no user will be willing to store their valuable data or resource content that requires service quality assurance in IPFS.

Therefore, IPFS attracts a group of professional storage service providers to provide more professional, secure and stable storage services by building the incentive mechanism of Filecoin (Filecoin is a decentralized storage network based on IPFS, a blockchain project based on the IPFS network, and an incentive system of IPFS). Filecoin has its own reward and punishment mechanism. If the miner is not online when the customer needs the data, or the miner deletes the data, then the system will automatically confiscate the FIL pledged by the miner, but the miner who provides storage and retrieval services to the customer as required can obtain FIL.

Therefore, we believe that Filecoin's incentive system can solve the problem of slow popularization of IPFS and promote IPFS to form a fast-growing, large, self-circulating Web 3.0.

Renhe—IPFS technical team is strong

In May 2014, Juan Benet, who graduated with a master's degree in computer science from Stanford University, founded the Protocol Lab. The Protocol Lab is a gathering of elites. The current core team consists of more than 76 talents from world-renowned universities such as Stanford University, MIT, and Harvard, as well as talents from global multinational technology giants such as Google, IBM, and Oracle. In addition, there are about 4,000 top engineers from all over the world and elites in the storage industry who jointly maintain the IPFS network.

In addition, IPFS technology has been accumulated for more than six years. In addition to the BitTorrent protocol, IPFS also integrates at least four mature technologies: BitTorrent-BT protocol technology, Git-module technology, DHT-distributed hash table, and SFS-self-certification naming technology. It is equivalent to a giant standing on the shoulders of four giants. This height, you have to appreciate it carefully~

When one technology replaces another, we need to consider not only the technological advancement and technical team, but also a comprehensive analysis of social needs, efficiency, cost, participation, incentive system, etc. This is probably why, although distributed storage projects are not uncommon, most of them are short-lived.

IPFS is lucky. It was born in the era of rapid development of the Internet and grew up in the torrent of the HTTP model. It has a group of down-to-earth technical teams that focus on IPFS network security and long-term development (rather than making money). It has successfully applied cross-chain thinking and solved the problem of not being able to quickly popularize by building Filecoin, a blockchain incentive layer. It has also won the favor of the world's top venture capital companies, and has received support and solidarity from traditional Internet giants and mainstream blockchain public chains. Looking at all distributed projects, IPFS is the only project that has won many of the above honors.

Filecoin Financing

Therefore, let us look forward to the promising future of IPFS.