The founder of Demonoid Deimos May Have Passed AwayAccording to a platform moderator the founder of Demonoid probably died last year. Demonoid is no longer in its team’s possession and without Deimos ‘ phone, there can be no recovery. Some are socked and some are moved as the internet reminds that behind usernames and projects are real people. The founder of the popular BitTorrent tracker who went by the username “Deimos” has died in a car accident back in August 2018, according to a global moderator of the Demonoid forums. The announcement leaves a 1 percent chance he’s still alive and out there, based on the fact that a local news report has published a description that doesn’t suit. The moderator goes on to detail that in the days that followed his death another person accessed the Deimos profile several times through his laptop but there has been no other activity since then. That laptop is the only thing that can access backend Demonoid and backup servers in the cloud, so no one else can keep tracker running without it. This is consistent with the fact that Demonoid stopped working with server-side issues last summer and did not resort to using any online backups or mirrors. The “Deimos” profile has also remained silent since then, and this January a Reddit post urged people to avoid using Demonoid, as it is no longer in the original community and team’s possession. If Demonoid is ever resurrected, then a person who has access to that laptop will need to use a different name and do so. “2/2.2386.png” Figure 1 source image: demonoid.info Demonoid was one of the oldest BitTorrent trackers out there that has served the planet since April 2003 so it has a large fan base. In these last 15 years, the internet has taken leaps and bounds and the BitTorrent monitoring room has acquired many new platforms that can process billions of connections daily. That said, the void of Demonoid can be filled technically, and has already been done in practice. What can not be replenished is the loss of one of those rare people who see the internet as a way of turning the world into a better place by allowing us to share data openly and anonymously and Deimos seemed to be one of those romantic tech-altruists. May he rest peacefully.