Are bittorrent webseeds similar to how webtorrent does things?
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/345 is pretty ingenious and simple, and could be a good thing, even though I agree with all the criticisms it has received too.
But personally I don't understand why we can't just use torrents. BitTorrent already supports "webseeds", which are servers that literally serve the file, and the same file can be served from many of these servers. BitTorrent is a very simple protocol too, with many libraries and implementations in many different languages. There is no reason to reinvent things.
Or maybe there is. What is the reason? What can this (or other similar proposals) do that BitTorrent directly can't?
Discussion
No, they're just servers that host the content and serve them through HTTP. They're also supported by WebTorrent.
BitTorrent gets a whole bunch of things right, but it’s core fault (which I think is just an unfortunate case of its design predating cryptocurrencies) is that it doesn’t distinguish people who want to consume from people who want to provide.
This is something that Nostr gets right, and why it’s got a better chance of scaling vs scuttlebutt. There are people who run relays and there are people who use clients. And it’s possible economically because relay operators can charge for the service they provide.
For the BitTorrent network to be healthy users must try to balance what they take from the network by giving back to the network. This is hardly ever the case, so you end up with leeches on one side ruining the network, and lawful users who suffer for their good will.
If you can incorporate a currency to bridge the gap between consumers and providers you have yourself a much healthier system.
We can make paid seeders with Lightning as a BitTorrent extension, but would anyone really use that?
Paid to host the seed? If so, yeah probably.
Only for niche content that's not available without incentives
The thing is that once you start re-jigging BitTorrent to adopt a paid incentive structure you might as well opt for a much simpler protocol altogether
It’s possible paid relays may offer seeding and hosting media content for their users. I see it as a value add service.
Mobiles can’t really seed, so torrents will need to defer to a server somehow.