(Giving me flashbacks to the days of the Slyck forums!)

As first torrents, then cyberlockers, and then streaming came to dominate, the other P2P networks and programs did one of the following:

• Shrunk to a much smaller number of users but still linger on.
• Software stopped being developed, domain name lost
• Purposely closed down to avoid legal consequences
• Pivoted to something else (like legal downloads or streaming e.g. Napster, Audio Galaxy, or a different P2P network, e.g. Limewire went from Gnutella to BitTorrent to... web file transfer?)

Every now and then, I try a Kad/ed2k client but soon return to torrents. E.g. a few months ago I tried out aMule on Linux... and got a LowID. 23 years after I first started using it, I still can't dodge LowID 😂 It does have content, though.

Compared to previous times I revisited Kad/ed2k, some sites/services with ed2k links have now finally disappeared: MoTV (Ministry of Television), TV Underground, ShareTheFiles. I think VeryCD is still going though.

Shareaza is still a thing (at least, a fork of it is), still claiming to be the one P2P app to rule all the networks. One of only three clients left (according to Wikipedia) that still access the Gnutella network.

Just to see what's up, I installed Gtk-Gnutella (last updated March 2024). I can find a few things in searches, but still waiting for them to begin to download. UPDATE: One just started downloading, although the speed is max 50 Kib/s, ETA is at least a few hours.

I might give a Soulseek client a try, as a hard drive full of music I got from Soulseek in 00s recently died (yes, it lasted 15 years!), and Soulseek seems to be the music P2P that never dies (and has a Linux client).

PS I don't think Retroshare is a "new iteration"; it's been going since 2006!

Many of the old file-sharing networks are still around and actively in use. MuWire has a lot of interesting books and recordings. EMule is a good place to find music, including obscure remixes. Gnutella is mostly porn, including child porn that's so open I feel like it might be part of a law enforcement operation.

Retroshare seems like a p2p Facebook rather than a file-sharing network. I've always wanted to get into it, but I don't know anyone else using it.

To my knowledge, both eMule and DC++ are still active, but I think private trackers have become the more dominant technology for file sharing.

As of last I was aware, eMule was still kicking (pun intended)

Afaik the person who wrote winmx is now publishing fopnu and darkmx. So it's still around, just in a modern iteration.

anyone here ever use Winny (the Japanese predecessor?/copycat? of winmx) or "Share" (also Japanese p2p)?

any news about their developers?