Since unveiling plans for a P2P (peer-to-peer) chat platform, BitTorrent has been sharing details gradually. Wednesday saw a pre-alpha test of the new Windows chat client, “Bleep,” by a select group. Beyond its own use, BitTorrent aims to make this peer-to-peer technology available to other messaging applications and services.
“Bleep,” as explained by BitTorrent’s Senior Product Manager, Jahee Lee, comes from the company’s privacy principle that all messages and metadata from users are just ‘bleep’ to them, completely out of its view.
The Bleep chat client from BitTorrent doesn’t require central servers to find and manage users. It uses Distributed Hash Tables (DHT), a type of decentralized data set any connected client can access. This method is common among file-sharing apps and other P2P clients. Merging this approach with SIP, a popular standard for messaging and VOIP apps, BitTorrent created Bleep’s decentralized architecture, which other SIP-compatible clients can potentially adopt.
Christian Averill, Director of Communications at BitTorrent, mentions that as long as the messaging app uses SIP, transferring from a server-based client to BitTorrent’s platform should be theoretically simple. Plans for onboarding third-party services are not public yet, but discussions with interested companies have been welcomed by BitTorrent.
Moving from a traditional server-based technology to a P2P approach might be prompted by promises of enhanced security. As per BitTorrent, not having a central desk or server provides resistance against various sorts of intrusion, including government surveillance. The company also aims to amplify the security of the actual messages.
BitTorrent asserts that they use secure encryption protocols like curve25519, ed25519, salsa20, poly1305, and are advocating for end to end encrypted communication to be the new norm in the post-Snowden era.
The idea of decentralizing chat isn’t entirely new. Skype, now using a hybrid architecture that relies on servers for some functions, was entirely P2P-based in the past. In the previous year, there were reports of NSA, the American National Security Agency, being capable of obtaining audio and video data from Skype calls.
This article was updated in 2025 to reflect current trends and insights.
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Paul Balo is the founder of TechBooky and a highly skilled wireless communications professional with a strong background in cloud computing, offering extensive experience in designing, implementing, and managing wireless communication systems.
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