The Theta Pre-Guardian Node program is off to a great start! For those who aren’t familiar, the PGN is an early preview of Guardian Nodes, the 2nd layer of nodes in Theta’s multi-BFT consensus mechanism. It is very exciting to see that since April 8th, 2019 the number of verified nodes increased from 467 to 662, total THETA in PGN client increased from 68 to 80 million and pending TFUEL earnings total almost 671 thousand TFUEL! All this despite the fact that TFUEL earnings are just a fraction of what users will earn for running an actual Guardian Node once they launch in Q3 of this year. Exchanges continue to work on the integration of the Theta mainnet. Trust Wallet is now supporting Theta and Theta Fuel. Ledger and Trezor integrations are also in process. Last week NASA’s Antares rocket launch to the International Space Station was streamed on Sliver.tv. The team published an insider preview of how Theta Network integrates across PC, mobile, and the CJ Viewing TV box, walkthrough by Timothy Li, Head of Platform at Theta Labs. The final version of “Scalable BFT Consensus Mechanism Through Aggregated Signature Gossip” paper by Theta CTO Jieyi Long and lead developer Ribao Wei was published. The paper was also selected for presentation at the upcoming IEEE Intl. Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency in Seoul this May. Theta community continues to grow. Network statistics constantly shows impressive numbers. The project gains ground. Further updates to follow!
Development
THETA has 8 public repositories and 15 private repositories. Overall, the Project has frequent commits to the collection of repositories.
Theta Pre-Guardian Node program continues to grow!
Since April 8th, 2019:
- Verified nodes increased from 467 to 662
- Total THETA in PGN client from 68,323,295 to 80,200,527
- Pending TFUEL earnings total 670,764 TFUEL
Update coming soon on the first monthly TFUEL distribution to PGN users.
Theta Insider Preview: CJ Viewing Box
video on official Theta Youtube channel.
Timothy Li, Head of Platform at Theta Labs, walks through Theta Network integration across PC, mobile, and the CJ Viewing TV box.
More info here.
Social encounters
Upcoming events:
- May 16th, 2019:
Theta CTO Jieyi Long and lead developer Ribao Wei have been selected to present their white paper Scalable BFT Consensus Mechanism Through Aggregated Signature Gossip at the IEEE Intl. Conference on Blockchain & Cryptocurrency in Seoul, South Korea.
Read more on “Scalable BFT Consensus Mechanism Through Aggregated Signature Gossip” by Theta CTO Jieyi Long and lead developer Ribao Wei here. In this paper, they present a new BFT consensus mechanism which enables thousands of nodes to participate in the consensus process, and supports very high transaction throughput. This is achieved via an aggregated signature gossip protocol which can significantly reduce the messaging complexity and thus allows a large number of nodes to reach consensus quickly. The proposed aggregated signature gossip protocol leverages a non-interactive leaderless BLS signature aggregation scheme. The authors have proven the correctness of the protocol, and analyzed its efficiency. In their analysis, each node only needs to send and receive O(logn) messages to reach agreement, where each message just contains a couple kilobytes of data.
- The team will be doing monthly live AMAs going forward, and you can vote for who you’d like to see next from Theta team here.
Finance
Trust Wallet is now supporting Theta and Theta Fuel(TFUEL).
“The Theta blockchain is the only end-to-end infrastructure for decentralized video streaming and delivery that provides both technical and economic solutions,” said Viktor Radchenko, Founder of Trust Wallet. “It will be excited to see how this project will unfold. If they deliver on their promises, it could be huge.”
Information from Coingecko.com:
Network Statistics
Sliver.tv statistics (April 25th, 2019):
The information is taken from Similarweb.com.
Roadmap
Q1 2019:
- Release Theta wallet for Android OS, Apple iOS, web (completed)
- Transition majority of SLIVER.tv streamers and channels to the Theta infrastructure (in-progress)
- Launch Theta Mainnet on March 15th
- Complete Theta token swap based on snapshot of existing ERC20 Theta tokens on Ethereum blockchain (1:1)
- Complete Theta Fuel distribution to existing Theta token holders (1:5)
- Update Block Explorer
- Release Guardian Node Onboarding Program light client
Q2 2019:
- Beta release universal edge cacher client
- Launch 3rd party Validator partner program
- Enhance Mesh Streaming Network scalability
- Enhance Blockchain scalability
- Launch Developer tools for Theta mainnet integration
- Beta release Android mobile SDK integration with initial partners
Q3 2019:
- Launch support for video on demand (VoD) in Theta Mesh Streaming Network
- Launch guardian node functionality and onboard initial group of community-run guardian nodes
- Beta release support for Android-based set-top boxes and smart TVs
- Introduce guardian nodes into the validator node set on rotating basis
- Launch smart contract support
Q4 2019:
- Expand Theta content delivery beyond video to support all forms of data (e.g. file updates, game patches, video ads, audio/music, etc)
Partnerships and team members
NASA rocket launch event was streamed on Sliver.tv on April 17th, 2019.
- Theta team recently began collaborating with IoTeX, a leading project at the intersection of IoT and blockchain.
Their teams originally met back in July 2018, when they jointly hosted a Korea meetup with their friends at Zilliqa, Quantstamp, and Kyber Network. Now after the Theta mainnet launch, the projects are discussing the many ways they can leverage their respective blockchains and domain expertise to drive adoption of their protocols.
@Theta_Network on Twitter on April 22th, 2019:
“Our good friends at IoTeX @iotex_io just launched their Mainnet! Congrats and looking forward to future Theta x IoTeX collaborations.”
IoTeX Mainnet Alpha is now LIVE! — video.
Rumors
Twitter:
New reviews on Theta Network:
- An introduction to Sliver.tv, Theta, and tokenised bandwidth sharing on Coinrivet.com.
- THETA Project Review — Next Generation Video Delivery on KryptosChain Youtube channel.
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
Theta community continues to grow. However, there is a slight fluctuation in the number of subscribers of Theta social media channels these weeks.
On December 6th, 2018: Theta subreddit has moved to Theta_network. And telegram chat moved to ThetaNetwork.
Official Telegram group — Discussions on testnet, price, possible partnerships, etc.
Facebook — 15–25 likes per publication, 1–5 shares.
Twitter — Average number of retweets is 35–40 for one post.
Bitcointalk.org — since November 23rd, 2017. Discussion on mainnet launch, price, roadmap. Last publication — on April 19th, 2019.
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.
