P2P networks possess some essential advantages. A key trait of P2P is that it optimizes network usage by distributing it throughout the community of network users and thereby avoiding bottlenecks. This will allow researchers and academics to be able to exchange extremely large files via LionShare that would not otherwise have been transferable. Additionally, while most centralized, non-P2P systems are limited by their rigidity, the user-centered approach of LionShare is one that will maximize the users ability to control the sharing, downloading, and organizing of digital media while providing direct collaborative tools for individuals, departments, and organizations.

Many instructors, scholars, researchers, and librarians across higher education institutions have "hidden" repositories of digital content (images, audio, video, research papers, data sets, learning resources, learning activities, etc.) used for teaching, research, and outreach stored on their networks or even individual hard drives. This content is "hidden" in the sense that other potential users at their own and other institutions have no way to discover these resources. In short, there is a distribution problem for the digital content. A peer-to-peer distribution network would solve this problem via a federated search and retrieve strategy that allows a single search query to reach all available repositories.