

TRON, the foundation building the infrastructure for a decentralized Internet, today unveiled details about Project Atlas, an initiative that paves the future of content distribution. In its first phase, BitTorrent will connect the peer-to-peer network and its 100 million monthly active users to the TRON blockchain. Using a set of BitTorrent protocol extensions, a custom token, and an in-client token economy, the company aims to make the BitTorrent protocol faster and better for hundreds of millions of users.

“Project Atlas is the foundation for a new way of content distribution. To start, the product will feature faster downloads, more seeds, no mining, and backward compatibility. It is adapted to the world we live in today: mobile, connected, and transparent. We aim to eventually empower all content creators and their communities by eliminating the middleman and enabling content creators to distribute directly to users,” said Justin Sun, founder and CEO of TRON.

In the initial phase of Project Atlas, BitTorrent peers will be able to spend tokens to incentivize users on faster networks to seed torrents for longer periods, which will lead to better swarm longevity and faster download speeds. BitTorrent seeders will be able to earn tokens by dedicating more of their bandwidth and storage to ensure that swarms are faster and live longer. For users concerned about mining, TRON (TRX) uses a Delegated Proof of Stake system, meaning users who participate will exchange tokens based on resources provided, not mining.

BitTorrent is implementing the features as a set of backward-compatible protocol extensions, meaning all torrent clients will continue to work flawlessly, irrespective of if a user chooses to download or seed to/from the new generation of users, or if a user is running a torrent client other than BitTorrent or µTorrent.

BitTorrent plans to implement this exciting evolution of the protocol across its desktop and mobile products and will be releasing details about the implementation to the developer community and encouraging other torrent clients to follow its lead to improve the ecosystem for everyone. As always, the company plans to continue to offer its products for free.

TRON and BitTorrent will be sharing more information about Project Atlas during a live streaming on Youtube on September 28th – 7 PM (PST).