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Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent

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

#71

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

patrickaljord wrote: post #21
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…

I beg to differ. I used to have a Netflix subscription here in France (not anymore), my wife is from Latin America and wanted to use English subtitles instead of French ones (and so did I), funny thing is, English subtitles were not available in France, the only way to get English subtitles was to use a proxy and a US Netflix account (not possible anymore as many proxies are blocked) or just use torrent. There are ma…

I always wonder how normal, presumably honest, people go from "I can't watch my shows with the subtitles that I like" to "I'll just steal it."

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

#72

Post by joosters »

Sargos wrote: post #43
monokh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, this will probably be integrated with AZTEC or some kind of zk scheme before it becomes a full mainnet protocol due to the risky nature of torrents.

Double criminality! If you are having to launder your micropayment income, you probably should start to question your morals...

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

#73

Post by joosters »

crispyporkbites wrote: post #61
ActsJuvenile wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Cryptocurrency doesn’t look good when it is inevitably compared with the early days of the web. The internet got rapidly better each year, whereas crypto has been around for years without any real improvements, in usability, safety, or efficiency.

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

#74

Post by nybble41 »

gpm wrote: post #22
xiphias2 wrote: post #9

Earlier 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…

This doesn't seem to pay creators though, it pays people who have bandwidth to seed (redistribute) their streams instead.

It's paying the people actually doing the work required at the time (the distribution of works which are already public). If creators want to get paid they need to arrange for that before making the work public, not after. There are plenty of perfectly viable options for ensuring that creators get compensated for their work. Copyright just isn't one of them.

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

#75

Post by Proven »

The inconvenience of having to open a KYC'd crypto exchange account to buy crypto and use it is way worse than finding a free torrent to download.

Not to mention the difference between paying for pirated content (or worse, selling it) and doing it for free.

Congratulations on reinventing a bad solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

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

#76

Post by namibj »

heavyset_go wrote: post #25
xiphias2 wrote: post #9

Earlier 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…

Of the private trackers that I know of, only the ones that solicited donations were raided and taken down. I am unaware of any explicitly paid private trackers, and such a business model seems like a great way to conjure the ire of the FBI.

They instead require seeding performance/behaviour that almost necessitates renting a seedbox.

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

#77

Post by Sargos »

joosters wrote: post #72
Sargos wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this will probably be integrated with AZTEC or some kind of zk scheme before it becomes a full mainnet protocol due to the risky nature of torrents.

Double criminality! If you are having to launder your micropayment income, you probably should start to question your morals...

I doubt many people have a moral quandary over torrenting. It's like video games with the ease of use of Steam and how game piracy is no longer a big problem since it's easier to just buy them, if there was a simple one-stop shop where I could watch movies and TV shows with one click I would pay for it no problem. I'm not going to pay to jump through hoops and remember 5 different passwords to 5 different services.

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

#79

Post by Sargos »

joosters wrote: post #73
crispyporkbites wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Cryptocurrency doesn’t look good when it is inevitably compared with the early days of the web. The internet got rapidly better each year, whereas crypto has been around for years without any real improvements, in usability, safety, or efficiency.

I don't know what you mean. Maybe you just don't pay attention?

A few years ago transactions were limited to 15 transactions per second, today there are multiple ways to achieve thousands of transactions per second[1]. A few years ago privacy didn't exist and now there are multiple ways to achieve privacy [2][3]. A few years ago end users had to remember long complicated strings to send a transfer or to restore their wallets and now there are easy ways to transfer to human readable names [4] and social wallet recovery [5] if you lose your funds or make a mistake. Argent alone is a huge increase in usability for end users.

There are more but if you even look at these metrics then things are improving at a great clip. Faster than the early web even.

[1] https://medium.com/matter-labs/evaluating-ethereum-l2-scalin... [2] https://tornado.cash/ [3] https://www.aztecprotocol.com/ [4] https://ens.domains/ [5] https://www.argent.xyz/

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

#80

Post by cchance »

teknopurge wrote: post #44
mratsim wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

storj.io already does this.

Sia, MaidSafe, Storj, Filecoin, a number of networks either out or on the way for this kind of storage, theirs another one too but I can't remember the name of it for the life of me and I was a node a year or 2 ago for them lol.
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