[nefariousoctopi]

I think that this is pretty much what IPFS [1] (and others I cannot remember right now) does. If I remember correctly, it builds on some of the BitTorrent ideas, but does not implement whole BitTorrent protocol.

It might be interesting to integrate IPFS into standard BitTorrent clients.

[1]: https://ipfs.io/

EDIT: Of course I ment IPFS in combination with IPNS (Inter-Planetary Name System)

[toomuchtodo]

IPFS is most definitely the long term solution, but I'm now of the opinion that in order to bridge the gap, IPFS needs to incorporate the Bittorrent protocol so you're serving IPFS from "supernodes". These nodes would abstract away Bittorrent and IPFS to the underlying data, since its SHA hashes all the way down (both entire objects, and chunks of the object).

Think of how S3 can serve content either via HTTP or via torrent for each object. Same idea, except with a distributed announcement/hash table.

[jbpetersen]

I'm of the same opinion. It's much easier to gain mindshare by abstracting over the status quo and swapping out the innards than by starting from scratch with better tech but no existing culture around it.