IPFS has perhaps 2,000 times the resources ($) of dat. (Raised via the filecoin sale.) Surely that must count for a little.

Considering how much resources, github starts, and fanbois IPFS has, and yet the network layer is still shit, bandwidth not utilized to fullest.

Instead of just reusing bittorrents piece-per-peer-exchange-protocol (that greedy not perfect algorithm, forgot its name) - which can saturate even high end links, they invented bitswap, full with bugs, then decided lets make filecoin instead, like a bartering engine of exchanging pieces.

datproject also can saturate my 250mbit connection.

Thanks for posting. Never heard of DAT before but it looks to be exactly the BitTorrent alternative I've been looking for

Check out hyperdb and hyperdrive (implementations of the core replicable data structures used in dat)!

One more note: dat's implementation is quite modular, the hyper* libraries are designed to be replicated in a network-agnostic way.

(Theoretically you can do this with IPFS too, but I love how dat is implemented!)

I'm trying to get a foothold in this space (this space being whatever the area of camlistore/perkeep - ipfs - dat - etc.

I've also been excited that Dat seems to be investing a Rust implementation that would presumably make Dat accessible from any language that can interoperate with C/Rust.

Yeah, I'm keeping an eye on the rust implementation of hyperdb!

It might make it count for less, considering the liability it now has to make investors whole

It was an ICO, there are no such liabilities.

It should, but it might end up not.