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Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent

blog.statechannels.org

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Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent

#61

Post by crispyporkbites »

ActsJuvenile wrote: post #27
yoavm wrote: post #6

"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…

Furthermore, downloading the Ethereum Blockchain, going through shady exchanges to buy ether coins, and maintaining a secure wallet is a much bigger headache than simply paying for Amazon Prime. This is a nice tech demo but not of any practical significance.

That’s like someone in the 90s saying paying for an internet connection, getting an email address and signing up for YouTube is too much of a headache than turning on the TV.

Besides, you can earn currency from just seeding the torrent- presumably there would be a way to download some initial torrents for free and then you can contribute to the network directly without needing to get a wallet or set anything up.

It’s on the web as well, so it could be as seamless as YouTube, only you’d have a small currency counter that goes up if you leave the tab open, and you can either spend that currency by downloading or withdraw it by selling it to other users who would rather pay than seed.

Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent

#62

Post by miohtama »

crispyporkbites wrote: post #58
miohtama wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck trying to cash out any meaningful amount. You would need to declare source of funds and you really do not want write "piracy" to your bank.

Right but if you can get priority downloads on torrents, access to early releases or use the currency for other things (eg a VPN) Then you don’t need to cash out at all

You are just shifting the anti-money laundering responsibility for merchants. It is not going to be a long term game.

Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent

#63

Post by crispyporkbites »

miohtama wrote: post #62
crispyporkbites wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but if you can get priority downloads on torrents, access to early releases or use the currency for other things (eg a VPN) Then you don’t need to cash out at all

You are just shifting the anti-money laundering responsibility for merchants. It is not going to be a long term game.

Cash has been around for millennia

Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent

#64

Post by tphyahoo2 »

tmcls wrote: post #5
random_kris wrote: post #2

Could this be ported to bitcoin lightning ?

[Member of the statechannels.org team here.] Not directly. State channels are similar to lightning, but there's a key difference: * in lightning each payment is routed through the network independently, requiring participation from the intermediary nodes * in a state channel the intermediary nodes are used to establish a channel and then the payments are direct The upshot is that in state channels, once the connectio…

I will try to assume good faith here, and just state facts.

Lightning channels are 2 end points, p2p.

Lightning routes are a sequence of lightning channels. Routes are also 2 end points, also p2p. No trusted is required for intermediaries.

Every internet packet, unless it is you to your lan router, passes through many intermediaries. I have no idea how ethereum state channels work, but I assume they route using tcp/ip, and statechannel team understands this as p2p.

So anyway, lightning is p2p.

Cheers.

https://standardcrypto.wordpress.com/2020/04/30/a16z-struggl...

Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent

#65

Post by LockAndLol »

imhoguy wrote: post #51
LockAndLol wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are anonymous torrents thanks to I2P. If those were to become more popular, then it might be more interesting to embed payments there.

There is low chance to find a peer in I2P for some already niche material. Tor with clearnet exit nodes is better although still less peers due to NAT.

Bittorrent over Tor isn't a good idea

https://blog.torproject.org/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-id...

Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent

#66

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

monokh wrote: post #41
vageli wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with no knowledge on the subject, why would accepting payment increase liability? As in, the target of the lawsuit would also be liable for the money they received, or something else?

It's probably worth noting the horrible privacy characteristics of Ethereum. With the right resources, It's straightforward to track down the identity behind the seeders.

This uses state channels for payment which is more secretive than using regular ethereum transactions. To take the cake, the funds can be mixed on tornado.cash or AZTEC or whatever the latest ETH privacy tech is.

Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent

#67

Post by tomphoolery »

> Users can upload files and begin seeding to earn small, incremental, amounts of money from anyone that downloads from them.

How do you know that the user uploading the file actually owns the rights to distribute the file? Wouldn't this just incentivize those with the infrastructure (e.g., money/bandwidth) to take over the market and suddenly get paid for sharing others' content?

The idea of "let's combine a distributed filesharing system with a distributed currency" is completely sound, and one that I've worked on in the past. But this is a totally backwards way of approaching the problem. You have no way of actually paying the content creators, just the content hosts. It's just more of the same, and at least with Spotify I get some neat analytical tools. But this just seems like it's designed to help the people who run topsites, not the people who actually make the content and NEED the money.

Thumbs down until you figure out the problem of rights management through your protocol.

Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent

#68

Post by saurik »

tomphoolery wrote: post #67

> Users can upload files and begin seeding to earn small, incremental, amounts of money from anyone that downloads from them. How do you know that the user uploading the file actually owns the rights to distribute the file? Wouldn't this just incentivize those with the infrastructure (e.g., money/bandwidth) to take over the market and suddenly get paid for sharing others' content? The idea of "let's combine a distrib…

> How do you know that the user uploading the file actually owns the rights to distribute the file?

While I appreciate that BitTorrent files are technically used to distribute some "legitimate" things, even in those cases the people you are talking to are part of a swarm: like, the premise is that you are paying someone to have helped you get more of a file you are downloading that everyone has agreed shall cost nothing (whether or not it actually does), not that you are compensating them for the file itself (which would have value above and beyond the bandwidth and cpu costs).

Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent

#69

Post by neiman »

tomphoolery wrote: post #67

> Users can upload files and begin seeding to earn small, incremental, amounts of money from anyone that downloads from them. How do you know that the user uploading the file actually owns the rights to distribute the file? Wouldn't this just incentivize those with the infrastructure (e.g., money/bandwidth) to take over the market and suddenly get paid for sharing others' content? The idea of "let's combine a distrib…

They're building a software, not a service. They can't control what their users do with their software, in the same way that Microsoft can't control if you use Word to re-publish Harry Potter under your name.

Evaluate them by the software they build, not by how potentially some people will use it.

Re: Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent

#70

Post by neiman »

Like other people here, I think it's technologically interesting. Also, like many others, I don't see any great practical use-cases for this right now.

However, "if you build it they will come". I'm excited to see what will the creative minds of the internet do with this technology once it exists.

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