Bram Cohen

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Bram Cohen
Bram Cohen.jpg
Cohen in 2015
Born (1975-10-12) October 12, 1975 (age 48)
New York City, U.S.
Alma mater University at Buffalo
Occupation(s) Chief executive officer, Chia Network
Known for BitTorrent protocol
SpouseJenna Cohen
Children3
RelativesRoss Cohen (brother)
Awards USENIX STUG Award
Time 100
MIT TR35
Website bramcohen.com

Bram Cohen is an American computer programmer, best known as the author of the peer-to-peer (P2P) BitTorrent protocol in 2001, as well as the first file sharing program to use the protocol, also known as BitTorrent. He is also the co-founder of CodeCon and organizer of the San Francisco Bay Area P2P-hackers meeting, was the co-author of Codeville and creator of the Chia cryptocurrency which implements the proof of space-time consensus algorithm.

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Early life and career

Cohen grew up in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, as the son of a teacher and computer scientist. He claims he learned the BASIC programming language at the age of 5 on his family's Timex Sinclair computer. Cohen passed the American Invitational Mathematics Examination to qualify for the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad while he attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City. He graduated from Stuyvesant in 1993 [1] and attended SUNY Buffalo. He later dropped out of college to work for several dot com companies throughout the mid to late 1990s, the last being MojoNation, an ambitious but ill-fated project he worked on with Jim McCoy.

MojoNation allowed people to break up confidential files into encrypted chunks and distribute those pieces on computers also running the software. If someone wanted to download a copy of this encrypted file, they would have to download it simultaneously from many computers. This concept, Cohen thought, was perfect for a file sharing program, since programs like KaZaA take a long time to download a large file because the file is (usually) coming from one source (or "peer"). Cohen designed BitTorrent to be able to download files from many sources, thus speeding up the download time, especially for users with faster download than upload speeds. Thus, the more popular a file is, the faster a user will be able to download it, since many people will be downloading it at the same time, and these people will also be uploading the data to other users.


BitTorrent

In April 2001, Cohen quit MojoNation and began work on BitTorrent. Cohen unveiled his ideas at the first CodeCon conference, which he and his roommate Len Sassaman created as a showcase event for novel technology projects after becoming disillusioned with the state of technology conferences.

Cohen wrote the first BitTorrent client implementation in Python, and many other programs have since implemented the protocol.

In the summer of 2002, Cohen collected free pornography to lure beta testers to use the program. [2] BitTorrent gained its fame for its ability to quickly share large music and movie files online. Cohen has claimed he has never violated copyright law using his software. [2] Regardless, he is outspoken in his belief that the current media business was doomed to being outmoded despite the RIAA and MPAA's legal or technical tactics, such as digital rights management. In May 2005, Cohen released a trackerless beta version of BitTorrent.

In late 2003, Cohen had a short career at Valve, working on Steam, their digital distribution system introduced for Half-Life 2 . [ citation needed ]

By 2004, he had left Valve and formed BitTorrent, Inc. with his brother Ross Cohen and business partner Ashwin Navin. In 2012 he announced a beta-version of BitTorrent Live for TV broadcasting through the Internet. [3] Cohen left BitTorrent, Inc. in a day to day capacity to co-found Chia Network in the fall of 2017. [4]

BitTorrent and the MPAA

By mid-2005, BitTorrent, Inc. was funded by venture capitalist David Chao from Doll Capital Management, and in late 2005 Cohen and Navin made a deal with the MPAA to remove links to illegal content on the official BitTorrent website. The deal was with the seven largest studios in America. The agreement means the site will comply with procedures outlined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. [5]

Chia Network

Chia Network is a company founded by Cohen in 2017 [6] that has implemented a proof of space-time cryptocurrency called Chia. Chia is intended to avoid the waste of energy involved in proof-of-work-based cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, [7] and the vulnerability to state actors of proof-of-stake systems.

Chia Network has raised seed money from investors including Andreessen Horowitz. [7] The use of storage media (hard disk and solid-state drives) as the cryptocurrency's mining medium has raised concerns over potential price surges and shortage of high-capacity storage devices, [8] as well as radically reducing the lifetime of drives. [9]

Personal life

As of 2008, Cohen lived in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States, with his wife Jenna and their three children. [10]

Cohen says that he has Asperger syndrome [2] based on a self diagnosis. [11]

Cohen's hobbies include original origami and juggling up to five balls, but his main interest is in recreational mathematics. Cohen maintains a blog [12] where he frequently discusses trust metrics with software developer Raph Levien, as well as money systems, games of skill, and other math-related topics. He is also an assembly puzzle enthusiast. [13] [14] He has designed several puzzles including some in conjunction with Oskar van Deventer including several gear-based puzzles such as Gear Shift [15] and a multiple Rubik's Cube variant called Bram's Fortress. [16] Some of Cohen's puzzle designs are available for 3-D printing via Shapeways. [17]

Awards

Cohen has received a number of awards for his work on the BitTorrent protocol. These awards include:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LimeWire</span> Peer-to-peer file sharing application

LimeWire was a free peer-to-peer file sharing client for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Solaris. Created by Mark Gorton in 2000, it was most prominently a tool used for the download and distribution of pirated materials, particularly pirated music. In 2007, LimeWire was estimated to be installed on over one-third of all computers globally.

BitTorrent, also referred to simply as torrent, is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner. The protocol is developed and maintained by Rainberry, Inc., and was first released in 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BitComet</span> BitTorrent, FTP and HTTP client

BitComet is a cross-protocol BitTorrent, HTTP and FTP client written in C++ for Microsoft Windows and available in 52 different languages. Its first public release was version 0.28. The current BitComet logo has been used since version 0.50.

Proof of work (PoW) is a form of cryptographic proof in which one party proves to others that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended. Verifiers can subsequently confirm this expenditure with minimal effort on their part. The concept was invented by Moni Naor and Cynthia Dwork in 1993 as a way to deter denial-of-service attacks and other service abuses such as spam on a network by requiring some work from a service requester, usually meaning processing time by a computer. The term "proof of work" was first coined and formalized in a 1999 paper by Markus Jakobsson and Ari Juels. The concept was adapted to digital tokens by Hal Finney in 2004 through the idea of "reusable proof of work" using the 160-bit secure hash algorithm 1 (SHA-1).

BitTorrent is a proprietary adware BitTorrent client developed by Bram Cohen and Rainberry, Inc. used for uploading and downloading files via the BitTorrent protocol. BitTorrent was the first client written for the protocol. It is often nicknamed Mainline by developers denoting its official origins. Since version 6.0 the BitTorrent client has been a rebranded version of μTorrent. As a result, it is no longer open source. It is currently available for Microsoft Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android. There are currently two versions of the software, "BitTorrent Classic" which inherits the historical version numbering, and "BitTorrent Web", which uses its own version numbering.

Avalanche is the name of a proposed peer-to-peer (P2P) network created by Pablo Rodriguez and Christos Gkantsidis at Microsoft, which claims to offer improved scalability and bandwidth efficiency compared to existing P2P systems.

This is a timeline of events in the history of networked file sharing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FrostWire</span> Free and open-source BitTorrent client

FrostWire is a free and open-source BitTorrent client first released in September 2004, as a fork of LimeWire. It was initially very similar to LimeWire in appearance and functionality, but over time developers added more features, including support for the BitTorrent protocol. In version 5, support for the Gnutella network was dropped entirely, and FrostWire became a BitTorrent-only client.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Transmission (BitTorrent client)</span> BitTorrent client

Transmission is a BitTorrent client which features a variety of user interfaces on top of a cross-platform back-end. Transmission is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, with parts under the MIT License.

Protocol encryption (PE), message stream encryption (MSE) or protocol header encrypt (PHE) are related features of some peer-to-peer file-sharing clients, including BitTorrent clients. They attempt to enhance privacy and confidentiality. In addition, they attempt to make traffic harder to identify by third parties including internet service providers (ISPs). However, encryption will not protect one from DMCA notices from sharing illegal content, as one is still uploading material and the monitoring firms can merely connect to the swarm.

Peer exchange or PEX is a communications protocol that augments the BitTorrent file sharing protocol. It allows a group of users that are collaborating to share a given file to do so more swiftly and efficiently.

Rainberry, Inc., formerly known as BitTorrent, Inc., is an American company responsible for μTorrent and BitTorrent Mainline. The company was founded on September 22, 2004 by Bram Cohen and Ashwin Navin. It was successful during the Great Recession under the leadership of CEO Eric Klinker. In 2018, the company was acquired by cryptocurrency startup TRON, and Bram Cohen left the company. In March 2022, the SEC charged Rainberry with fraud for selling cryptocurrencies Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT) as unregistered securities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vuze</span> BitTorrent client

Vuze is a BitTorrent client used to transfer files via the BitTorrent protocol. Vuze is written in Java, and uses the Azureus Engine. In addition to downloading data linked to .torrent files, Azureus allows users to view, publish and share original DVD and HD quality video content. Content is presented through channels and categories containing TV shows, music videos, movies, video games, series and others.

The following is a general comparison of BitTorrent clients, which are computer programs designed for peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol.

μTorrent Proprietary adware BitTorrent client

μTorrent, or uTorrent, is a proprietary adware BitTorrent client owned and developed by Rainberry, Inc. The "μ" in its name comes from the SI prefix "micro-", referring to the program's small memory footprint: the program was designed to use minimal computer resources while offering functionality comparable to larger BitTorrent clients such as Vuze or BitComet. μTorrent became controversial in 2015 when many users unknowingly accepted a default option during installation which also installed a cryptocurrency miner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Twister (software)</span> Blog software

Twister is a decentralized, experimental peer-to-peer microblogging program which uses end-to-end encryption to safeguard communications. Based on BitTorrent- and Bitcoin-like protocols, it has been likened to a distributed version of Twitter.

Proof of space (PoS) is a type of consensus algorithm achieved by demonstrating one's legitimate interest in a service by allocating a non-trivial amount of memory or disk space to solve a challenge presented by the service provider. The concept was formulated in 2013 by Dziembowski et al. and by Ateniese et al.. Proofs of space are very similar to proofs of work (PoW), except that instead of computation, storage is used to earn cryptocurrency. Proof-of-space is different from memory-hard functions in that the bottleneck is not in the number of memory access events, but in the amount of memory required.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tron (cryptocurrency)</span> Blockchain computing platform

TRON is a decentralized, blockchain-based operating system with smart contract functionality, proof-of-stake principles as its consensus algorithm and a cryptocurrency native to the system, known as Tronix (TRX). It was established in March 2014 by Justin Sun and since 2017 has been overseen and supervised by the TRON Foundation, a non-profit organization in Singapore, established in the same year. It is open-source software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chia (cryptocurrency)</span> Cryptocurrency

Chia is a cryptocurrency where mining is based on the amount of hard disk storage space devoted to it rather than processing power as with proof of work cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. The platform was created by a California based company called Chia Network Inc. The Chia Network was founded in 2017 by American computer programmer Bram Cohen, the author of the BitTorrent protocol. In May 2021, Chia Network raised a $61 million investment, valuing the company at about $500 million. The same month, the company announced plans to conduct an IPO before the end of 2021. As of 2023, Chia had filed a draft registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission towards an IPO.

Chia Network Inc. is a US-based blockchain technology company. The company built the Chia blockchain that uses proof of space and proof of time consensus protocols and issues the digital currency Chia (XCH). Chia Network was founded in 2017 by Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, and Ryan Singer. Its headquarters are in South San Francisco, California.

References

  1. ↑ Cohen, Bram. "Resume". Archived from the original on July 8, 2011. Retrieved April 3, 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 Thompson, Clive (January 2005). "The BitTorrent Effect". Wired. Archived from the original on March 26, 2006. Retrieved March 18, 2006.
  3. ↑ BitTorrent Inc. (2011). "BitTorrent Live JukeBox". BitTorrent Live Beta. BitTorrent Inc. Archived from the original on October 25, 2013. Retrieved September 7, 2012.
  4. ↑ Constine, Josh (November 8, 2017). "BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly bitcoin competitor Chia". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on January 26, 2018. Retrieved January 18, 2018.
  5. ↑ Gentile, Gary (November 23, 2005). "Hollywood Hopes BitTorrent Deal Will Reduce Illegal Movie Downloads". Information Week.[ permanent dead link ]
  6. ↑ Constine, Josh (November 8, 2017). "BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly bitcoin competitor". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on January 26, 2018. Retrieved November 12, 2021.
  7. 1 2 "Energy-saving Bitcoin rival Chia raises from A16Z, plans mini-IPO". TechCrunch. March 28, 2018. Archived from the original on February 13, 2021. Retrieved February 15, 2021.
  8. ↑ Humphries, Matthew (April 19, 2021). "Chia Cryptocurrency Expected to Cause Hard Drive and SSD Shortages". PC Magazine . Archived from the original on May 10, 2021. Retrieved May 10, 2021.
  9. ↑ Lilly, Paul (May 11, 2021). "Chia mining can wreck a 512GB SSD in as little as 6 weeks". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on May 17, 2021. Retrieved May 19, 2021.
  10. ↑ Susan Berfield (October 15, 2008). "BitTorrent's Bram Cohen Isn't Limited by Asperger's". Bloomberg Businessweek. Bloomberg L.P. Archived from the original on May 22, 2017. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  11. ↑ Roth, Daniel (November 14, 2005). "Torrential Reign". Fortune . pp. 91–96. Archived from the original on April 8, 2006. Retrieved November 6, 2006.
  12. ↑ "Bram Cohen's Journal". bramcohen.livejournal.com. Retrieved September 24, 2022.
  13. ↑ Bram Cohen (May 7, 2012). "TCP Sucks". Bram Cohen's Blog. Bram Cohen. Archived from the original on December 16, 2015. Retrieved September 7, 2012.
  14. ↑ Jason McIntosh (June 21, 2009). "Bram Cohen's puzzle shop". The Gameshelf. Archived from the original on January 11, 2012. Retrieved September 7, 2012.
  15. ↑ Oskar van Deventer (October 9, 2010). "Gear Shift". YouTube. Archived from the original on July 4, 2016. Retrieved May 14, 2013.
  16. ↑ Oskar van Deventer (August 25, 2012). "Bram's Fortress". YouTube. Archived from the original on October 13, 2016. Retrieved May 14, 2013.
  17. ↑ Bram Cohen (August 25, 2012). "Bram Cohen Puzzles". Shapeways. Archived from the original on November 16, 2013. Retrieved May 14, 2013.
  18. ↑ "Wired 12.04: The 2004 Wired Rave Awards". Wired . January 4, 2009. Archived from the original on May 27, 2012. Retrieved November 11, 2011.
  19. ↑ "2005 Young Innovators Under 35: Bram Cohen, 29". MIT Technology Review . 2005. Archived from the original on January 28, 2012. Retrieved August 14, 2011.
  20. ↑ "Special Issue: The Time 100". Time . April 10, 2005. Archived from the original on November 5, 2012. Retrieved July 14, 2010.
  21. ↑ "Usenix Stug Award". USENIX. Archived from the original on January 11, 2012. Retrieved November 11, 2011.
  22. ↑ "The Big Report – The Internet Evolution 100". Internet Evolution. Archived from the original on August 31, 2013. Retrieved November 11, 2011.
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