BitTorrent and TRON announced the development of the BitTorrent File System protocol, also known as BTFS. Much like IPFS, BTFS is a file-sharing model that operates on the basis of decentralized nodes that choose to store files. Like IPFS and BitTorrent, BTFS is a decentralized, peer-to-peer model, but with the additional benefit that users are incentivized to participate in “seeding” (storing) data, by earning BTT tokens. This is a large departure from IPFS and BitTorrent, both of which had no clear incentive model beyond altruistic intentions.

Because BTFS talks about data, it’s important we address how that relates to Bluzelle.

Bluzelle is a decentralized, edge key-value data cache. Bluzelle is optimized to enable software to cache important data at the edge, gaining key advantages with respect to performance and availability. Bluzelle came about due to a major missing component in the decentralized Internet — the decentralized data store.

BTFS is a file storage service and should not be confused with structured data storage. It is imperative to understand the difference between file storage and structured data storage, as this question comes up often.

A typical software application will need to store and retrieve files as well as structured data (not files), that is internal to its application code. The files can be stored and retrieved with services like BTFS (or IPFS or Storj or Sia), while the application data itself would be stored to a solution like Bluzelle.

Bluzelle and file storage services like BTFS are not competitors but complements to each other, completing the software stack. One can compare BTFS to the likes of DropBox, GoogleDrive, etc. Bluzelle, on the other hand, would (at best) be comparable to Redis and MemCached, keeping in mind that Bluzelle is the world’s first decentralized data store and cache.

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