Брэм Коэн: BitTorrent протоколының авторы және инновациялық ойшыл

American programmer and author of the BitTorrent protocol

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.

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. 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. Cohen left BitTorrent, Inc. in a day to day capacity to co found Chia Network in the fall of 2017.

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.

Chia Network is a company founded by Cohen in 2017 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, and the vulnerability to state actors of proof of stake systems. Chia Network has raised seed money from investors including Andreessen Horowitz. as well as radically reducing the lifetime of drives.

As of 2008, Cohen lived in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States, with his wife Jenna and their three children. Cohen's hobbies include original origami and juggling up to five balls, but his main interest is in recreational mathematics. Cohen maintains a blog 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. He has designed several puzzles including some in conjunction with Oskar van Deventer including several gear based puzzles such as Gear Shift and a multiple Rubik's Cube variant called Bram's Fortress. Some of Cohen's puzzle designs are available for 3 D printing via Shapeways.