cjb/gittorrent

GitTorrent is a proof-of-concept project that lets people share and download Git repositories through a peer-to-peer network instead of relying on a central server like GitHub. The idea is that once a repository is shared on the network, anyone can download it directly from other users who already have it, without going through a single company's servers. The project works by combining several technologies. BitTorrent handles the actual file transfer between peers. A distributed hash table, which is a way for computers on a network to store and look up information without a central database, keeps track of which peers can provide which repositories. Bitcoin's blockchain is used to register human-readable usernames, mapping them to cryptographic keys so you can find a person's repositories by name rather than by a long hex string. To use it, you install the package via npm, then clone repositories using a special URL format that starts with gittorrent:// instead of the usual https://. You can also serve your own repositories to the network by running a small background daemon. The tool integrates with Git's own network layer, so standard Git commands still work behind the scenes. At the time the README was written, the Bitcoin username feature was not yet fully operational on the live network because it depended on a change to Bitcoin Core that had not yet shipped. Until that change landed, registrations used the Bitcoin test network and would not carry over. The project was described as an experiment and welcomed contributions, including changes to its overall design. It is MIT-licensed and was created by Chris Ball. The repository has not been actively maintained in some years, so it is more of a research artifact than a production-ready tool.