Each year, the good people at Fast Company review the year in innovation, identifying enterprises at the leading edge. The Fast Company “50 Most Innovative Companies” list profiles the thought leaders, problem solvers, and change agents who are redefining business as usual. This year’s honorees include established powerhouses like Nike and Amazon, creative upstarts like Fab and Uber, and social disruptors like Coursera, and D-Rev.

This year’s honorees also include BitTorrent, for using a 170-million-strong network to help artists who get it. We were just named one of tech’s most “terrifying/intriguing.” Consider us honored.

Because we were founded to support Internet innovation. For over a decade, the BitTorrent protocol has been the most efficient, resilient way to move big files and big ideas. Today, BitTorrent moves between 20-40% of all Internet traffic.

We do so in a way that’s sustainable for the Internet pipes we all share. In 2009, we published and open sourced µTP, a protocol-level innovation designed to alleviate network congestion.

And we do so in a way that’s sustainable for artists and fans.

In 2012, we worked with 16 artists to create a more viable distribution paradigm. The outcome of those experiments? A legal content ecosystem of 152 million downloads. We helped drive millions of BitTorrent users to artist properties. And we helped independent artists build six-figure email lists.

On behalf of creators, we’ve taken on the challenge of content discovery, with BitTorrent Surf. We’ve collaborated with Internet Archive to preserve the web’s artifacts. We’ve opened up access to Alphas and Torque dev tools, so that any user or engineer can build with BitTorrent.

And this is just the beginning.

High-fives to everyone on our team in SF and Minsk. Read all about it over here.