Welcome to the February edition of Theta biweekly!
To take the Theta blockchain to the next level, the team thinks they must give the Theta community the tools to innovate and build upon their foundation. The community needs to govern the Theta blockchain with Guardian Nodes in addition to the Enterprise Validator Nodes, create new Theta use cases with full smart contract support, and have a robust block explorer with real-time analytics to monitor the blockchain. Altogether, these community-focused updates make up Theta vision for the next phase of its growth — Theta Mainnet 2.0, coming in March.
We love keeping track of the continued growth of the Theta network. At the time of writing, there are 665 Pre-Guardian Nodes / Edge Cachers and 10 Enterprise Validators. Theta Network AMA featuring Theta CEO Mitch Liu and Head of Strategy Wes Levitt was streamed live on THETA.tv yesterday, on February 12th. Some exciting highlights of AMA: Samsung is to join Binance, Blockchain and gumi Cryptos Capital in running an Enterprise Validator Node on Theta blockchain! Press release soon. There are several more Enterprise Validators on the way. The team will share an update soon alongside their public announcement of their long-term strategic investment in blockchain technology.
Theta’s focus for 2020 will be onboarding video platforms to build out the decentralized Theta Network. The integration with Bitmovio is live. You can earn TFuel and MoviBits by watching videos (available on Chrome browser and selected video only). Huge video platform name as a new partner to be announced soon to integrate Theta! Moreover, the team is working with Sony + Littlstar to add native Theta support into Playstations and collaborating with the NASA to bring you a livestream of rocket launches!
Last week, the Theta Network team published the last video from their exhibition at Samsung Developer Conference, discussing the vision for Theta integration in Samsung smart TVs and using Theta to create a global network of edge devices to share video and data. A must-see! Coming soon the team will have a more public exhibition at NANO OPT Media in Tokyo April.
Stay tuned for more updates soon, and the Theta Mainnet 2.0 in March!
Development
GitHub metrics:
THETA has public repositories and private repositories. Overall, the Project has frequent commits to the collection of repositories.
Developer activity (from Coinlib.io):
Theta Mainnet 2.0:
Why the team is creating the Theta blockchain?
The team’s long-term vision for the Theta Network is a decentralized end-to-end protocol for processing and delivering data, not just video but all types of data. Decentralized data delivery, at the edge, powered by you. That vision encompasses three main components that are to be powered by Theta edge nodes, run by the community:
Data Delivery — Initially focused on video delivery, and implemented on THETA.tv and multiple other video platforms coming soon. But the scope of decentralized data delivery goes beyond video into file updates, game patches, OS and app updates, web content, and any other form of data delivery.
Data Storage — As Theta expands from livestreaming applications to Video-on-Demand (VoD), app updates, and game patches, it becomes necessary to have a decentralized solution to data storage. Theta nodes can cache the most in-demand live and static content and files to ensure they are able to contribute to the network and earn TFUEL.
Data Encoding — By allowing Theta nodes to perform ingest/encoding of raw video and data as close to the source as possible, particularly for live events (professional sports, concerts, conferences, for example), the Theta Network will truly become an end-to-end solution for video and data. Building out this functionality is a natural extension for the Theta team, based on the team’s experience encoding live VR events in 2016 for SamsungVR, Intel IEM, ESL, and others.
For performing each of these three services (or all three at once), users earn TFUEL as a reward, incentivizing them to support and grow the Theta Network. If you are one of the 2,690 users running the PGN / Beta Edge Cacher client now, you are part of the very beginning of this edge network encompassing end-to-end data transfer. Contributing your excess bandwidth to THETA.tv is just the beginning!
“In the long-term we see Theta as a way for anyone to contribute excess bandwidth/resources to the Theta Network, without a single centralized party coordinating the p2p connections or payments between users. Without blockchain I don’t think there is a way to give monetary incentives to those users unless you have a centralized coordinator. We are aiming to make video and other data delivery more efficient as the amount of data transferred annually continues to grow double digits annually. Our model is to grow the network and stake the Theta Tokens that Theta Labs holds, though our role should continue to reduce over time.”
— Wes Levitt, Head of Strategy at Theta Network
Awareness and social encounters
Theta Labs at Samsung Developer Conference — Theta in the Samsung ecosystem
Wes and Mitch from Theta Labs and Alicia from Samsung discuss the value Theta protocol can bring to the ecosystem of Samsung TVs, phones, and tablets
Theta Network AMA featuring Theta CEO Mitch Liu and Head of Strategy Wes Levitt
The AMA was streamed live on THETA.tv yesterday, on February 12th. The questions were live on http://THETA.tv or submitted ahead of time here.
Upcoming events:
Theta Network was recently featured by NEC at a private enterprise forum as a potential 5G use case for streaming VR and other bandwidth-intensive content. Coming soon the team will have a more public exhibition at NANO OPT Media in Tokyo in April.
Finance
Live Network Statistics:
February 13th, 2019
You can see the distribution of Pre-Guardian Nodes, Edge Cachers, and Enterprise Validator Nodes in real-time at thetatoken.org! Scroll down to “Live Network Stats”, which will update each time you refresh the page.
Pre-Guardian Nodes / Edge Cachers: 665
Enterprise Validator Nodes: 10
For information on Theta Guardian Nodes and how to join, see the announcement blog.
Information from Theta explorer:
Theta markets:
Information from Coinlib.io:
Staking is on the rise, with Theta Network recently added to Binance Staking
Network
For those, who are a little behind of times, on January 15th, 2020, the SIVER.tv team announced that SLIVER.tv officially renamed THETA.tv.
Their business has grown and evolved over the years since the team first started in 360° Virtual Reality Esports in 2016, maturing into a giveaway platform for Twitch streamers to grow their brand, finally resulting in the March 15th, 2019 launch of the blockchain-powered live streaming website — SLIVER.tv, powered by the Theta Network.
Almost one year later, this name change allows the team to better match their goals and closely align their brand alongside the flagship product — the Theta Network — their decentralized peer-to-peer CDN delivery infrastructure based on the blockchain. THETA.tv is the first of many video platforms to implement the Theta Network infrastructure, dramatically increasing user engagement and slashing video CDN costs by over 50%. With the THETA.tv team working in-house alongside the Theta Network engineers, they’re afforded the opportunity to improve their technology and gauge the results in real-time.
THETA.tv will now exclusively feature 100% blockchain-based direct livestreams and no longer embed other websites. Furthermore, the community will now collectively decide the top creators on the platform with the brand-new Partner Royale — a season-based streamer XP leaderboard that awards the top 10% of streamers with the coveted Theta Partner title. For those looking to stream on THETA.tv, they will have to get their hands on a stream key and from there work their way up to Affiliate, Partner, and finally Partner Prestige. More info on streaming to THETA.tv can be found here.
The logo remains the same as SLIVER.tv with slightly updated, brighter colors. You may find the new updated brand guidelines and logo download here. The launch of THETA.tv is just the beginning of what will no doubt be a monumental 2020!
THETA.tv Launch AMA
THETA.tv statistics:
February 13th, 2019
The information is taken from Similarweb.com.
Roadmap
Theta Roadmap:
Q1 2020
- Theta Mainnet 2.0 goes live with Multi-BFT consensus mechanism and growing number of enterprise validator nodes
- Guardian Nodes launch on Theta Mainnet 2.0
- Release of specialized smart contract support
- Theta streaming protocol supports full Video-on-Demand (VoD)
Q2 2020
- Beta launch of decentralized data storage
- Beta launch of decentralized file delivery of any content type, such as game patches, applications, OS updates
- Beta launch of Theta protocol adapted to Smart TVs and IoT devices
H2 2020
- Release of generalized Turing-complete smart contract support
- Beta launch of decentralized encoding protocol
- Production release of the end-to-end Universal Edge Cacher
Check out the latest updates on TFUEL integration with THETA.tv at the TFUEL streaming roadmap
THETA.tv Roadmap:
Partnerships and team members
Bitmovio and Theta Network integration is Live:
Theta Network x NASA:
The team is working with the Theta Network x NASA teams to bring you a livestream of ROCKET LAUNCHES!
Watch Rocket Launches. Earn TFUEL. To the Moon!
Rumors
Twitter:
New reviews:
THETA’s Relationship with this Moving Average Could Determine Its Trend.
3 Altcoins That Could Post Considerable Gains This Altseason: Theta Network mentioned.
Theta Token Review: What You NEED to Know:
Other:
Be aware of scammers! Admins of Official Theta Telegram chat will never DM you or ask for private info / keys / seed phrases!
Social media metrics
Social media activity:
Social media dynamics:
Theta community continues to grow. However, there is a slight fluctuation in the number of subscribers of Theta social media channels these weeks.
Official Telegram group — Discussions on development, possible partnerships, etc.
See also Official Telegram Theta trader, the channel for price and trade-related discussion.
Official Chinese Telegram group and Official Korean Telegram group.
Facebook — 15–25 likes per publication, 1–5 shares.
Twitter — The average number of retweets is 35–40 for one post.
Bitcointalk.org — since November 23rd, 2017. Discussion on mainnet launch, price, roadmap.
There is a slight growth in Theta community over time. The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of Theta Reddit subscribers, Twitter followers, and Facebook likes. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.
