You can do deduplication on chunks of the file. AFAIK, this is what cyphertite[1] does. Split each file in 256KB chunks, store their checksum and match those against a db do avoid resending / copying the same data over and over again.

I haven't tested cyphertite, but I've been meaning too. I mean, Ryan McBride is involved in the project as well as other OpenBSD devs. I'm hoping it has the same level of polish as OpenBSD.

[1] https://www.cyphertite.com/