That is the lacking area. There needs to be a development in the area of DHT crawlers and indexers to help find torrents on I2P like how btdigg works, but for I2P torrents. Hopefully one day.
Strict3443
Yes, absolutely. I have a VPS that runs a i2pd router and I can set my clients to point to my VPS and I am able to use the I2P network. In doing so, I had to make sure I forwarded the correct ports on my VPS so that it would reach the i2pd application. I will do a write up soon.
You can cross-seed torrents by adding I2P trackers to the tracker list. What helps is when you upload the .torrent file to tracker2.postman.i2p (the only? i2p public torrent tracker) so that others can find the magnet/torrent link and start downloading. That way people can find the InfoHash and also have trackers embedded in the i2p .torrent file to allow you to find seeders.
Some info on this subject: https://old.reddit.com/r/i2p/comments/xfqvap/how_to_correctly_cross_seed_to_make_clearnet/
From my experience, some popular I2P torrents have gotten up to 1 MB/s download, but I usually average around 200 KB/s. While it is not blazing fast, it does provide a good deal of anonymity for everyone involved with the torrent.
Also, you can lower the anonymity and increase speeds by reducing the number of hops from 3 to 2 or 1. You can choose how "anonymous" you'd like to be while torrenting, at the cost of speed.
Guide for Linux: https://strict3443.codeberg.page/i2p-info/hugo/public/posts/how-to-use-i2p-on-qbittorrent-nox/
You can install i2pd with sudo apt install i2pd
and then point your services towards your i2p router (Ex. 127.0.0.1) and you are good to go.
The I2P network thanks you.
What @supervent@lemmy.dbzer0.com said. Basically you get access to the I2P network (overlay on top of the regular internet) that provides anonymity and doesn't require any port forwarding. Thus, this allows every user to seed torrents without worrying about opening ports or getting letters in the mail.
The torrent space on I2P is still growing, there are some chads cross-seeding to the I2P network allowing for torrenting popular torrents over I2P.
Glad to see that working still! Torrenting over I2P is sort of a fail-safe option for people in somewhat oppressive places where VPNs may be illegal. Also, with the recent port-forwarding removal in Mullvad, this makes it harder moving forward to try and seed content without being able to make a direct connection with open ports.
The most known outproxy: https://stormycloud.org/i2p-outproxy/