ChoppA is a peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol & software based on BitTorrent. The biggest weakness of the BitTorrent (BT) protocol is its ineffectiveness to motivate file uploaders (a.k.a. seeders). Users, deep down, are greedy network participants who do not wish to share after downloading from others (free-riders).

ChoppA solves this morality problem by emulating what makes this society work – a free market. Every file (in fact, pieces of a file, but we use these two terms interchangeably) transaction is a trade. The person, at the moment downloading the file is denoted the buyer, while the one uploading is the seller. Virtual currencies are exchanged among these transactions. There are no restrictions on how or who to buy from/sell to, as every file sharing problem can be explained in real world economical terms.

The only requirement we enforce, is that users have to be truthful to each other. Every transaction is essentially the result of an auction (the closest example is eBay). The highest bidder gets to purchase the winning file (see Figure 1). The integrity of the auction is guaranteed throughout our protocol, and the file transfer performance builds upon existing, well-studied peer-to-peer research.

Figure 1 - Comparison of BitTorrent and ChoppA

Since the original BitTorrent protocol lacks certain incentives for people to truly “share”, ChoppA understands this problem and builds a community of file-sharers instead of the old hit-and-run concept. Downloading a file is no longer a boring click-and-wait operation, rather, we make the auction strategies an open API that gives users options to run their own “file-sharing business”. Of course, we would make this protocol BT-compatible for those who are too lazy worry about trading. But for the inventive users, they are free to come up with, or obtain from elsewhere clever trading strategies in order to make more virtual money (in turn gives more opportunities to download).

As add-ons to the basic ChoppA protocol, we also provide bounty board-like features to help clueless users obtain files no one is actively selling. On the other hand, (new or unpopular) sellers promote their files on advertisement boards. These improvements help promote the social side of ChoppA, which involves sharing with friends (more trustworthy and more likely to be relevant).

By using ChoppA, users eliminate the need to distinguish between seeding and leeching, thus obviating morality, or rather, incentive difficulties. The intrinsic motivation arises from the human notion of socializing and doing business with each other, rather than a simple computer operation. We believe that the success of current economic principles would apply the same way on the Internet, which means a) there is no need to ride-for-free as selling (uploading) the files would get more money in return, b) a file is guaranteed to be downloaded 99.99% of the time because there is an incentive for a rare piece to be sold for a high price in auction (like a rare car). As long as we make sure transactions are securely and efficiently performed, ChoppA would become a safe, effective, and fun community for file-sharing.

We are actively developing a Beta version of ChoppA. The first demo version will be available to public in early 2011. If you are interested in alpha-testing for us, please Contact Us.