Clarification needed regarding Cooperative Downloading.

[absolutep]

Describe the bug

As described in the Tribler research paper (image attached) - cooperative downloading is used to provide better speeds to the collector.

Question : -

1. When a "helper" downloads a part of the file (he does not want) to help collector, is that downloading - anonymous or not?

2. How much data does the "helper" download for the collector? Will that usage of data count towards helper's ISP data balance?

3. When Tribler uses Buddy-cast, Taste-Buddies algorithms amongst various Tribler users - are these messages encrypted/anonymous?

4. Is clubbing together the good users (contributing to Tribler network) a good idea? Won't they be an susceptible to attacks first?

5. Is the data which is stored in - Friends List, (Super) Peer Cache, Metadata Cache, Preference Cache - encrypted?

6. If data in point 5, is transmitted amongst Tribler users, do they travel anonymously among the Tribler users?

7. Is any/all overhead in Tribler - anonymous or not? Irrespective of its type.

8. When a Tribler user (ART) - is used as proxy for someone else - is the data that is being proxied for another person using ART as a proxy, visible to ART's ISP?

9. How much overhead can one assume Tribler will use in a day? Let's say 8 hours idle time.

10. Please provide a link - to all research papers regarding Tribler on the website or on the GitHub.

I know questions asked maybe rudimentary & jumbled but the documentation of Tribler is not up-to-date on website that is why asking here.

Furthermore, it is arduous to find proper up-to-date documentation about Tribler.

Also, provide date when the article or documentation was last updated. That would be a great help. Something as shown in screenshot.

Thanks.

[absolutep]

Got this reply

Dear absolutep,
Tribler is the oldest Torrent client in continuous improvement. Feature like “Taste-Buddies algorithms” have been removed a decade ago, as a university research team we try to relentlessly improve stuff for you.
The current overview of our Tribler lab activities and “cryptoeconomics thinking” can be found here: https://dicg2020.github.io/papers/pouwelse.pdf
Plus Github is a good starting point: Home · Tribler/tribler Wiki · GitHub
Is clubbing together the good users (contributing to Tribler network) a good idea?
This is indeed a very difficult scientific topic. We moved beyond tit-for-tat and try to make the worlds-first web-of-trust. For 30 years people tried to build one, but never succeeded. A recent in-depth article about this can be found here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.09950.pdf with more on my Scholar.google profile page. Hope this helps. Greetings, johan."

The answer is not at all satisfactory but atleast someone cared to reply.

So, point (3) Tribler does not support Taste-Buddies algorithms anymore. No clarity about Buddy cast.

Point (4) has been half answered and basically is a scientific conundrum that imo does not need, much attention atm - as other matters are more pressing.

Point (8) has been answered. Data is encrypted {atleast that is what I understood from the reply}

It is normal when a Tribler client has incoming and outgoing traffic without being an exit node. Clients connect to exit nodes not directly but via intermediate nodes for better anonymization. These intermediate nodes never connect to the outside world directly; they just pass data from other clients to exit nodes. Your Tribler client also works as an intermediate node for other clients. It is safe for you because only exit nodes send the actual requests to the outer world.

In hindsight, I think point (9) is pretty useless question. Cause it entirely depends on the seeder/leecher population using Tribler at any given moment in time.