Long time readers of this blog are probably familiar with the rise and fall of Scenelife (or ScL), the elusive general/0day tracker that finally shut down for good several weeks ago. While ScL is no more, the crew behind the tracker have not been silent - They’ve been preparing for the launch of ‘The X’, a next generation general/0-day torrent tracker based on the brand new (and yet to be made public) SCTBDEV codebase. The X tracks scene and P2P releases related to almost every category on the planet ranging from movies to music. And unlike many other new entrants to the BT scene which initially track only a handful torrents, The X is kicking off it’s operations with more than 15000 active torrents in the database.
Just like ScL used to be, The X does not allow it’s members to post screenshots, logo, full tracker name or URL in public. We have been told by staff that these measures are taken purely for security reasons. For those interested in getting a sneak peak of this tracker, there’s a full HD trailer online. Yeah you heard correct – a trailer for a BitTorrent tracker :p
To watch this video in larger resolutions, view it on YouTube from this link.
As we said earlier, you don’t often see General/0Day trackers being launched with over 15k torrents. Hell, most sites do not index that many torrents even after being online for a year. But The X does indeed track over 15500 torrents at this point and more are being added at regular intervals. Most of these torrents have 1 seeders each but they appear to be seedbox hosted and have pretty good download speeds (or at least the ones I tried had). Note that the 15000 torrent count is without any pornographic or adult content – XXX torrents are banned from this tracker and from its forums – The X is a family friendly site.
To prevent a lot of members signing up and then becoming inactive the tracker (a common problem in both new and old BitTorrent sites), The X enforces tougher than normal activity rules. Both download and upload are counted when weighing the activity of a member and forum posts and comments are also taken into account. A snatch policy is currently in the works as well and we are told that users would be required to make minimum of 3 snatches per month in order to survive on this tracker. Additionally, The X has a unique user class system where promotion requires not only a minimum ratio but a maximum ratio as well. For example, quoted below are the requirements for one particular user class promotion:
Must have uploaded atleast 25 GB, downloaded at least 15GB, have a ratio above above 0.9, and a ratio not more than 4.5, have made 15 forum posts, and 5 torrent comments.
The promotion is automatic when these conditions are met. Note that you will be automatically demoted from this status if your ratio drops below 0.9 or goes above 4.5.
Note that having a higher ratio than what’s specified in the FAQ will not get you any warnings or get you disabled. An excessively high ratio would only be a barrier in user class promotion. Either way, it’s strongly recommended that you read the FAQ and Rules in full the first the first time you log into this site.
How to get into The X
As we always say, no private tracker blog post would be complete without a way for our readers to get into the site. Thankfully, The X is not one of those uber l33t trackers you’ll have to trade your ass to get in. The site has an official invites IRC channel and you will easily be able to obtain an invite provided that you pass the short interview process. Invites channel details are as follows ( once on the channel, please follow instructions on channel topic ) :
Server: irc.p2p-net.eu
Channel: #x.interviews
Direct Link: irc://irc.p2p-net.eu/x.interviews
Newbie to IRC? Never fear – it’s not remotely complicated as it sounds. Read this brief tutorial and you will be all set.
Special thanks to SceneLife crew who gave us a heads up on this story and let our editors have a look around the tracker even before it was launched.
