How long until this is built into a decentralized PopcornTime-like service?
Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent
11–20 of 99 posts
Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent
#12"Torrenting has an incentivization problem. There is sometimes a real lack of incentive to seed a file, especially for obscure files where you may only find a single digit number of people that have it. Adding monetary incentives to the existing torrenting structure should prove to be extremely interesting." In my opinion, if torrenting meant one needs to pay for download, we would never have heard about torrents. Th…
> To me it's the usual crypto thing - very cool from a technological perspective, not useful in real life.
Indeed, the vast bulk of crypto technologies appear to be solutions out in search of problems.
Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent
#13"Torrenting has an incentivization problem. There is sometimes a real lack of incentive to seed a file, especially for obscure files where you may only find a single digit number of people that have it. Adding monetary incentives to the existing torrenting structure should prove to be extremely interesting." In my opinion, if torrenting meant one needs to pay for download, we would never have heard about torrents. Th…
But you don't have to pay - you have to seed. Anyone can start seeding and selling their bandwidth back to the network.
This means that people who can't afford the content but do have a network connection actually can obtain it and contribute to the network.
Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent
#14"Torrenting has an incentivization problem. There is sometimes a real lack of incentive to seed a file, especially for obscure files where you may only find a single digit number of people that have it. Adding monetary incentives to the existing torrenting structure should prove to be extremely interesting." In my opinion, if torrenting meant one needs to pay for download, we would never have heard about torrents. Th…
This has implications way beyond torrenting. This solves the incentivization of bandwidth in a decentralized way. If we now solve the closely related incentivization of long-term encrypted storage, we would be able to build a sustainable decentralized storage service unlike torrents that are powered by fame or Infura which is powered by corporate philanthropy (which never lasts unless we become the product). This mea…
How about distributed YouTube with micropayments instead of ads.
Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent
#15Could this be ported to bitcoin lightning ?
I guess so. Seeder would need to send us a lightning invoice, and after we make a payment we'd repeat the request with a proof of payment and the seeder would send us the next chunk of data. AFAIK Bittorrent protocols are quite extensible, and adding such metadata should be possible. However, this (paid torrent seeding) only makes economic sense if all seeders demand payment, and then the cheapest ones will be winning, driving prices close to zero.
Nice idea anyways, great to see people experimenting in the space!
Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent
#16"Torrenting has an incentivization problem. There is sometimes a real lack of incentive to seed a file, especially for obscure files where you may only find a single digit number of people that have it. Adding monetary incentives to the existing torrenting structure should prove to be extremely interesting." In my opinion, if torrenting meant one needs to pay for download, we would never have heard about torrents. Th…
People are already paying for downloading seeded torrents, they are just hidden behind private trackers, as the public torrent selection is quite small. I'm also paying for youtube premium, at the same time the people I'm listening to have to be careful not to say ,,COVID-19'', because their revenue would drop to 0, even though it was the main meme of the last few months. I would happily pay them through lightning ne…
> the people I'm listening to have to be careful not to say ,,COVID-19'', because their revenue would drop to 0
I don't understand what you meant by this. As in, everyone's tired of hearing about it?
Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent
#17"Torrenting has an incentivization problem. There is sometimes a real lack of incentive to seed a file, especially for obscure files where you may only find a single digit number of people that have it. Adding monetary incentives to the existing torrenting structure should prove to be extremely interesting." In my opinion, if torrenting meant one needs to pay for download, we would never have heard about torrents. Th…
People are already paying for downloading seeded torrents, they are just hidden behind private trackers, as the public torrent selection is quite small. I'm also paying for youtube premium, at the same time the people I'm listening to have to be careful not to say ,,COVID-19'', because their revenue would drop to 0, even though it was the main meme of the last few months. I would happily pay them through lightning ne…
People pay for private trackers? Every private tracker I have heard of is free to use. They handle the seeding motivation problem by having rules in place that require whatever level of seeding they feel is best for the community of the tracker. If you break those rules, you are kicked out. That seems to work fine without the need for micropayments.
Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are already paying for downloading seeded torrents, they are just hidden behind private trackers, as the public torrent selection is quite small. I'm also paying for youtube premium, at the same time the people I'm listening to have to be careful not to say ,,COVID-19'', because their revenue would drop to 0, even though it was the main meme of the last few months. I would happily pay them through lightning ne…
> the people I'm listening to have to be careful not to say ,,COVID-19'', because their revenue would drop to 0 I don't understand what you meant by this. As in, everyone's tired of hearing about it?
Early on in the pandemic, Youtube was demonetizing videos related to COVID-19 as they do for numerous other sensitive topics like war, death, or terrorist attacks. Many Youtubers would therefore be cautious even mentioning it tangentially to prevent that potential demonetization. I think it has been months since Youtube adjusted their policy on this to allow monetization (EDIT: Yep, this policy was changed over 3 months ago[1]).
[1] - https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/11/youtube-will-now-allow-cre...
Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent
#19Can one state channel be used to pay multiple seeders?
Or do I need to create a budget for each seeder I want to interact with?
Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent
#20"Torrenting has an incentivization problem. There is sometimes a real lack of incentive to seed a file, especially for obscure files where you may only find a single digit number of people that have it. Adding monetary incentives to the existing torrenting structure should prove to be extremely interesting." In my opinion, if torrenting meant one needs to pay for download, we would never have heard about torrents. Th…
You would only have to pay if you download more then you consume. If you contribute back to the network, equal resources you used then it is still "free".