Eventually there will be a wiki page for this, but until I get to ironing that out I'm creating a thread here to explain my intention, the goals therein, and the name chosen for it.
I like BitTorrent a lot. I think past attempts to supplant it have been noble but hobbled by hubris and blue sky insanity (looking at you, IPFS). There are a lot of warts within the BitTorrent protocol, because its creator was pretty eccentric even by programmer standards, and it's also certainly showing its age nowadays with 160-bit "info hashes" among other things. I am an active user of BitTorrent, and this protocol should in no way be misunderstood as a "replacement" or "fix" for BitTorrent. Such hubris is all too common in software technology, and would be anathema not only to the efficacy of this effort but also the fabric of our field as a whole.
I intend to create a protocol called Overgrow, or "OG" for short. In the Pokémon franchise, there are three special abilities that all starter Pokémon come with depending on their type: Overgrow (https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Overgrow_(Ability)) for Grass-types, Blaze (https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Blaze_(Ability)) for Fire-types, and Torrent (https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Torrent_(Ability)) for Water-types. (There is also a fourth variant ability for Bug-types called Swarm (https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Swarm_(Ability)) – sound familiar?) They all power up moves of the Pokémon's type in a pinch. The name chosen for "torrents" as we call them is apt, giving an image of overwhelming data from all directions. I think the name chosen, here—the Overgrow protocol, and perhaps Overgrowths for the file trackings themselves—is also apt in contrast to torrents as it suggests a higher degree of resiliency and stability that we crave now more than ever on today's Worldwide Web.
I intend to create a protocol that uses the same overarching data transit model of BitTorrent, with updated and more flexible cryptography fieldings. I also intend to heavily revise the architecture with regards to how it conceptualises the IP level, and I intend to make it completely amenable to a BitTorrent translation library so that adding support for Overgrowths along with Torrents is politically additive and non-hostile.