Theta Network: The launch of THETA Live Embed, Release of Windows GUI client for Guardian Node staking on testnet and Nano Ledger support for staking, Interview with Theta CEO Mitch Liu, Mainnet 2.0 coming soon
Biweekly update 13th February — 27th February
Welcome, Theta followers to Paradigm’s regular update on the Network!
As many of you knows, the community-focused updates make up Theta vision for the next phase of its growth — Theta Mainnet 2.0, coming in March. The team continues testing in the lead up to Mainnet 2.0. And two major new milestones released last week to prep for it: release of Windows GUI client for Guardian Node staking on testnet and Nano Ledger support for staking. And much more to come, keep an eye out for Theta Mainnet 2.0, coming soon!
The Theta Network is booming! We love keeping track of the continued growth of it. At the time of writing, there are 764 Pre-Guardian Nodes / Edge Cachers and 10 Enterprise Validators! And there are several more on the way!
The Theta team announced the launch of THETA Live Embed, a new turnkey product that allows 24/7 THETA.tv Esports live streaming content to be added to almost any website, blog, or social media platform with minimal technical effort. Popular games like Fortnite, League of Legends and CS:GO streamed through THETA Live Embed are fully integrated with the Theta Network blockchain, allowing viewers to relay streams to their peers and earn Theta token rewards, TFUEL, just for watching and sharing their bandwidth resources. The first partner to integrate the product is G FUEL, The Official Energy Drink of Esports. Furthermore, check out THETA.tv embed now on Sweeps! More THETA Live Embed partners coming soon with the streamlined new integration process.
As for the social side, Theta CEO Mitch Liu gave an exclusive interview to Stacking.ventures on what Theta is all about. Check it out! You won’t be disappointed! Theta Network AMA featuring Mitch Liu and Head of Strategy Wes Levitt was streamed live on THETA.tv on February 12th. Last week, the Theta Network team published the video on Theta official YouTube channel. A must-see! 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. The team will share an update soon alongside their public announcement of their long-term strategic investment in blockchain technology. Moreover, coming soon the team will have a more public exhibition at NANO OPT Media in Tokyo April.
Theta’s focus for 2020 is an onboarding video platforms to build out the decentralized Theta Network. The integration with Bitmovio is live. You can earn TFuel and MoviBits by watching. 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!
Can’t wait to see you in two weeks with more exiting updates on Mainnet 2.0!
“We see 2020 as the year that Theta Network begins seeing wide adoption by video platforms in U.S. and Asia regions, including our streamlined THETA Live Embed product launched this month. We have a few major platforms lined up that will give Theta Network video delivery exposure to millions of monthly users and allow them to earn TFUEL token rewards for using the network. The launch of Guardian Nodes run by the Theta community and additional Enterprise Validator Nodes will also get Theta to a fully decentralized state for staking and governance.”
- Mitch Liu CEO at Theta Network
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):
Two major new milestones released last week to prep for Theta Mainnet 2.0:
- Release of Windows GUI client for Guardian Node staking on testnet
- Nano Ledger support for staking
And much more to come — keep an eye out for Theta Mainnet 2.0, coming in March!
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!
Awareness and social encounters
Theta Network AMA featuring Theta CEO Mitch Liu and Head of Strategy Wes Levitt
Theta’s Mitch Liu and Wes take community questions on Theta’s plans for 2020, Guardian Nodes, upcoming partners, and more.
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.
· Huge video platform name as a new partner to be announced soon to integrate Theta!
THETA Interview with the CEO, Mitch Liu on Stacking.ventures:
How did the concept of THETA originate?
THETA project was borne out of the video platform THETA.tv(then known as SLIVER.tv). As a startup esports video platform, our CDN costs from streaming HD and VR video was enormous and not sustainable given our size and even more challenging is how to increase user engagement and retention. We raised a Series A round led by DHVC and at the time Dovey Wan from DHVC joined our board, and helped develop our idea of using a p2p, blockchain-based protocol to reduce our dependence on traditional CDNs (and therefore our CDN costs) while driving greater community involvement. After implementing the Theta protocol into THETA.tv and seeing the benefits, we quickly realized that Theta was something many video, media and OTT platforms could benefit from and shifted toward driving adoption of Theta protocol.
What’s the added value of the THETA in comparison with its competitors?
One of the biggest differences is we focus on a user experience that a casual user can understand, and integration with video platforms with strong existing user bases. We think that’s the most logical path to mass adoption, since the typical consumer is years away from dealing with private keys and running nodes and the like — it needs to be simple if you want to get the typical user onboard, not just technical crypto supporters.”
Other projects are working at similar problems from more of a bottoms-up, crypto-native approach to content sharing, like Livepeer where individual users are choosing the content to relay. That has value too and there’s enough room in the crypto space for both projects to be successful, but our edge is to partner and leverage platforms that already have millions of users.”
What is your outlook for the THETA Network and the blockchain industry?
We see 2020 as the year that Theta Network begins seeing wide adoption by video platforms in U.S. and Asia regions, including our streamlined THETA Live Embed product launched this month. We have a few major platforms lined up that will give Theta Network video delivery exposure to millions of monthly users and allow them to earn TFUEL token rewards for using the network. The launch of Guardian Nodes run by the Theta community and additional Enterprise Validator Nodes will also get Theta to a fully decentralized state for staking and governance.
Besides Theta, we see sentiment improving this year across all fronts for blockchain. Enterprises are starting to see real use cases come to production, investor capital is coming around with the market returning, and community users are more positive than ever. 2018–2019 were challenging years, but they were needed after the mania of 2017 and now the blockchain space is in a good place after having purged many of the scams and low-effort projects. We’re more confident than ever on the success of the Theta Network and blockchain as a whole.
Read the full interview 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 27th, 2019
You can now 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: 764
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, this January, 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.
THETA.tv Launch AMA
THETA.tv statistics (February 27th, 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 — this will continue to be updated as new features are completed and added to roadmap.
Partnerships and team members
San Jose, CA, February 13th, 2020 — Theta Labs announced the launch of THETA Live Embed, a new turnkey product that allows 24/7 THETA.tv Esports live streaming content to be added to almost any website, blog, or social media platform with minimal technical effort. Popular games like Fortnite, League of Legends and CS:GO streamed through THETA Live Embed are fully integrated with the Theta Network blockchain, allowing viewers to relay streams to their peers and earn Theta token rewards, TFUEL, just for watching and sharing their bandwidth resources. The first partner to integrate the product is G FUEL, The Official Energy Drink of Esports®.
Any partner site with THETA Live Embed automatically benefits from THETA.tv’s highly engaging and entertaining roster of more than 300 top Esports streamers including RisingFlame, teamtnt, and Deicide. The site and its users each earn 33% of the total TFUEL based on the amount of content and bandwidth shared, with the remaining 33% donated to support the streamers. All the revenue share is automated and transparent through Theta Blockchain’s “auto-split” smart contract and is easily auditable on the public chain. On average, sites can expect to see incremental revenues of $50,000 to over $100,000 per 1 million monthly active users.
“As The Official Energy Drink of Esports, we pride ourselves on pushing the envelope and providing the best experience possible to our Esports and gaming communities,” said G FUEL Founder and CEO, Cliff Morgan. “This includes expanding our long-term partnership with the innovators at THETA.tv and being an early adopter of THETA Live Embed — all so that we can easily provide live action-packed Esports content to our worldwide fans for free.”
With a simple IFrame approach and a few lines of JavaScript, THETA Live Embed can be added to any site with minimum development. This turnkey integration enables platforms to seamlessly adopt THETA.tv Esports content and the underlying Theta Network peer-to-peer video delivery infrastructure, without the need to understand digital wallets, security and other technical aspects of blockchain technology.
“As we engaged with potential Theta partners over the past year, we heard more and more that live 24/7 Esports content coupled with a loyalty or rewards program is strategic to their global business and user growth,” said Mitch Liu, CEO of Theta Labs, Inc. “We took THETA Live Embed a step further where our partners can integrate it in a few hours, and immediately start earning new revenues. Their users can earn rewards by simply watching content they love, sharing their bandwidth and being part of the community. It’s a powerful way for platforms to naturally drive retention and increase conversion to paid and premium products and services.”
To learn more about Theta Live Embed, visit them at embed.theta.tv.
About G FUEL
As The Official Energy Drink of Esports®, G FUEL provides gamers with a healthier, more performance-driven alternative to standard energy drink products — With an ever-expanding, sugar-free product lineup which includes a Powdered Energy Formula, Ready-To-Drink Cans, a Hydration Formula, as well as edible Energy Crystals, G FUEL has firmly established itself as the market leader within the world of beverage and supplements technologies.
And with over 160,000 5-star Shopper Approved Ratings, a shipping network which spans over 125 countries, a newly-forged nationwide retail campaign, and a global social media footprint of over 400 million followers, G FUEL maintains the industry’s largest and most passionate community of fans, customers, content creators and partners alike — Partners and creators who include the likes of FaZe Clan, Pewdiepie, KSI, Roman Atwood, Bethesda Game Studios, HYPEMAKER and WWE respectively.
Join the movement today at GFUEL.com and follow us on social media @GFuelEnergy.
Theta Network x NASA
The Theta Network team is working with the NASA teams to bring you a livestreams of ROCKET LAUNCHES !
Last launch happened on February 14th, 2020.
Watch Rocket Launches. Earn TFUEL. To the Moon!
Rumors
Theta 2020 overview:
Theta Labs launches its blockchain-rewarded game streaming THETA Live Embed player on blockchaingamer.biz
Theta Lab Launches Blockchain-Enabled THETA Live Ember To Present 24/7 Esports Content on blockchainmagazine.net
Websites can now earn crypto by embedding Fortnite livestreams on Decrypt: Theta.tv’s blockchain-based video platform rewards viewers and creators alike, and now websites can get a cut of the crypto via a new turnkey embed tool.
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, and Facebook likes. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.
