BitThief is an ongoing research project of the Distributed Computing Group at ETH Zurich. In this project we study selfish behavior in distributed systems, and in particular in peer-to-peer filesharing systems. The lack of incentives to contribute resources potentially results in a total Collapse of a peer-to-peer system, implying that it is essential for a completely decentralized system to incorporate protocols that ensure a fair sharing of resources.
What's New
* Version 0.1.7 of the BitThief client was a first proof-of-concept that free riding in BitTorrent is possible.
* The new version 0.3.0 adds a real tit-for-tat mechanism, based on source coding (plus some other new features).
