Millions of people are using the World Wide Web as a tool to share, read, and write information across the world using the Internet. The journey of the Internet started from web 1.0 to web 2.0, and now to web 3.0. You may have experienced the old version of the Internet (web 1.0). Back in the day, websites were static meaning that users were not able to interact with it. Therefore, streaming and downloading were not available. You can imagine the web used to be as a newspaper, where you can read without any interaction. However, the evolution of the Internet started with web 2.0, where users can interact with it. The emergence of interactive contents began with YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, etc. The benefits of the Internet are beyond imagination. However, every user on the Internet is under the control of one or more giant corporations. In a way, online corporations are using our personal information for their own benefits. It is evident that these corporations would not exist without us. The reality is inevitable. We provide online corporations with valuable contents. In return, we pay money to them to retrieve our own contents back. This leads to the emergence of web 3.0, where people can share contents freely anywhere anytime. Web 3.0 will involve the decentralization of the Internet using Blockchain technology.

“Freedom of information is only achieved by decentralizing the Internet.”

Currently, the only way to share free contents without any restrictions is “torrent.” Most likely, you have heard of the torrent, used torrent, or at least seen the term on the Internet somewhere. Torrent is the most significant and most common way to share content across the Internet without the involvement of any third parties. BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer protocol that facilitates the transfer of large, highly demanded files, and eliminate the need for trusted central servers. BitTorrent protocol enables users to upload and download contents that have been shared across a decentralized network. Contents are stored across many peers in the network. Users can download the required content from distributed peers across the network.

It is essential to understand the fundamental concepts of file sharing. As we have mentioned, files are stored across many peers (computers) across the Internet. The network becomes very productive if more nodes join the network sharing data. For instance, let’s suppose that Bob and Alice want to use torrent as a medium to share files. Bob may wish to download a podcast file that Alice has. In this case, Alice is the only peer in the network. Therefore, Bob has no choice other than downloading the podcast from Alice. However, once Bob acquires the same podcast, Bob would automatically become a peer in the network, and start sharing the podcast file as well. Now, let’s suppose John wants to download the same podcast. John is a bit luckier because there are more peers in the network that have the same podcast file. Therefore, John could download the data much faster than Bob. The more people share files, the more productive the network it becomes. However, there is one big problem in file sharing. There are no incentives for people to share data. For instance, Bob and John would stop the torrent from sharing their podcast file once they have it because there is no incentive for them to use their machines to help the community. That is the biggest downside of the torrent. Files might get vanished as soon as users stop sharing the data.

“Show me the incentive, and I will show you the outcome.”

Tron is a blockchain protocol that is used to create a decentralized and free Internet. Tron protocol is considered as one of the largest blockchain-based operating systems in the world that offers high transaction speed, scalability, and availability for any Tron blockchain-based decentralized applications. Therefore, on the Tron protocol, data doesn’t have any restriction meaning that users can share data without any limits, which reflects Tron core belief that users should have the ownership of their data.

Unlike web 2.0, where few giant corporates have control over the entire Internet community, corporates generate a massive amount of profits from its users. However, the money would not be distributed among the contributors. With web 3.0 or Tron, anyone who shares or contributes to the network is entitled to profit a portion of the overall profit. Tron protocol distributes value over the users based on their contributions.

Now, it is time to talk about the world most significant blockchain-based decentralized application!

In late 2018, Tron has acquired BitTorrent, which is a massive deal in the web 3.0 revolution. Currently, BitTorrent has more than 100 million users, which is more than a quarter of the total Internet traffic. The main goal for this project is to leverage the power of Tron blockchain to enhance the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network. Therefore, the BitTorrent platform becomes truly decentralized with the help of Tron blockchain. The partnership between Tron and BitTorrent is called “Project Atlas.” The vision for this project is to enhance the torrent ecosystem and long torrent lifetime. As mentioned earlier, the torrent has some limitations, specifically in the lifetime of the files on the torrent network due to the lack of incentives users are not willing to participate in sharing contents. However, this project provides incentives, TRX token, to share files back to the network. Users would receive TRX tokens if they allow the torrent client to share their data that have been downloaded from the torrent network. Moreover, users could use their earned TRX token to download files from torrent network much faster. Nevertheless, this project is considered one of the most substantial integrations of blockchain technology with an existing project such as BitTorrent. Therefore, there is no doubt the move to web 3.0 will change everything about how we interact online. Although the transition from web 2.0 to web 3.0 would take a lot of time, the change has already started. Therefore, Project Atlas is the beginning of the new evolution.

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