Tron Now Owns a Stake In BitTorrent Founder's New Crypto Project

When BitTorrent sold to the founder of controversial crypto startup Tron, it wasn't just one of web 2.0's earliest and most prestigious startups that changed hands.

It turns out, the peer-to-peer sharing company now owned by Tron founder Justin Sun also took a small stake in Chia Network, a soon-to-be-launched cryptocurrency protocol helmed by BitTorrent co-founder Bram Cohen, a fact that was not been previously disclosed by either firm.

According to documents obtained by CoinDesk, Sun submitted his winning acquisition offer to the BitTorrent Board on February 14.

"There has been no license or assignment of rights from BitTorrent to Bram [Cohen] or Chia. All software and related intellectual property rights used internally or distributed by Chia was either developed by Chia employees or contractors, licensed from third parties or was available in the public domain. Chia has committed to open source."

In July, BitTorrent announced it would operate from Tron's San Francisco offices.

While Cohen remained on BitTorrent's board, he left to start Chia in late 2017.

Validators on the network turn over unused disk space for Chia's use, according to its FAQ. In March, it announced a $3.395 million funding round led by Naval Ravikant, which also included Andreessen Horowitz, True Ventures, MetaStable, Greylock Partners, Danhua Capital and DCM. DCM was also the leading shareholder in BitTorrent.

Google Patents lists six patents with Cohen as the inventor, the oldest being "End-system dynamic rate limiting of background traffic." All of the patents he's credited with still show up as assigned to BitTorrent.

Internal BitTorrent documents reveal that early on Sun wanted Cohen and other early staff to return, but removed that requirement as a stipulation of the deal.

BitTorrent did not reply to a request for comment by press time.