more readme cleanup

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Jeremy Kauffman 2017-03-13 12:14:02 -04:00 committed by GitHub
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## What is LBRY?
LBRY is a fully decentralized network for distributing data. It consists of peers uploading
and downloading data from other peers, possibly in exchange for payments, and a distributed hash
table, used by peers to discover other peers.
LBRY is a protocol providing fully decentralized network for the discovery, distribution, and payment of data.
On LBRY, data is broken into chunks, and each chunk is content
addressable, specified by its sha384 hash sum. This guarantees that
peers can verify the correctness of each chunk without having to know
anything about its contents, and can confidently re-transmit the chunk
to other peers. Peers wishing to transmit chunks to other peers
announce to the distributed hash table that they are associated with
the sha384 hash sum in question. When a peer wants to download that
chunk from the network, it asks the distributed hash table which peers
are associated with that sha384 hash sum. The distributed hash table
can also be used more generally. It simply stores IP addresses and
ports which are associated with 384-bit numbers, and can be used by
any type of application to help peers find each other. For example, an
application for which clients don't know all of the necessary chunks
may use some identifier, chosen by the application, to find clients
which do know all of the necessary chunks.
It utilizes the [LBRY blockchain](https://github.com/lbryio/lbrycrd) as a global namespace and database of digital content. Blockchain entries contain searchable content metadata, identities, and rights and access rules.
LBRY also provides a data network consists of peers uploading and downloading data from other peers, possibly in exchange for payments, and a distributed hash table, used by peers to discover other peers.
## Contributions