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The most difficult part of building any peer-to-peer network has always been designing the incentives for all participants. As peer-to-peer networks require all participants to do their “job” to keep the network running. 

This problem is not native to centralized businesses, as a centralized business is the producer and everyone else are customers. In a peer-to-peer network, every node in the system acts as both consumer and producer, so a robust incentive scheme is the only way to ensure that the network is healthy and functional. 

As I continue my journey in exploring the crypto-sphere, I try to rethink how new businesses can made with differently designed incentive structures. When used properly, the blockchain offers a solution to problems that have plagued peer-to-peer networks for the longest time. 

A historic view. 
One of the first peer-to-peer systems was Bittorent. It was one of the largest success of the outright peer-to-peer technologies. It was widely adopted, and its intended use was to distribute large files across the internet. It became a popular method of downloading files, as it was more efficient than the centralized alternatives. 
Whenever you download a file, your node makes a decision on which block of the file to download and which peer to prioritize in its own sharing. The only basic rule peers follow is:  

•	Peers will prioritize sharing files with peers that have shared the most with them. 

Keeping in mind that this is how other peers will prioritize your download speeds/experience, several second rules apply if a node wants to download files faster:

•	Peers will request the rarest part of the files first. This increases the chances that other peers will request for that part of the file. With this mechanism, the system is effectively trying to keep every part of the file alive and not allow a certain part to become extinct. 

•	Peers that have a better connection to one another will send and receive more files between one another. This translates to a more efficient network as larger files are transferred amongst nodes. 

The huge missing piece from Bittorent’s system was- that there was no build in incentives for nodes to “seed” a file once you have downloaded it. Without incentivising a node to keep a file indefinitely, files will eventually become extinct on the Bittorent platform, unless the file is so popular that people are constantly in the midst of transferring it. 

The solution for this problem was through private torrent trackers. These trackers keep track of how much each account has uploaded and downloaded to the platform. When you allow other nodes to seed your files, the private tracker will credit your account and these credits can be used to when downloading files. Downloading files will spend your stored credits and uploading increases your credit.  Another word for *credit* is **currency**. This made Bittorent one of the first successful utilizers of peer-to-peer networking technology.