Dear crypto community, welcome to the December edition of Theta biweekly!
As many of you already knows, phase 1 of Littlstar x Theta collaboration begins tomorrow! Premium content drops in just one day! Live stream top Esports competitors through your PlayStation 4 and stay tuned for more details soon!
Two Theta Network’s AMAs were recently held: Q&A with Crypto^^Nation and AMA in Oddgems Telegram group. Check out some amazing questions which were equally answered by Wes Levitt, Head of Strategy at Theta Labs, it is transcripted below.
If you want to see the Theta Network live in action, you can check out the distribution of Pre-Guardian Nodes, Edge Cachers, and Enterprise Validator Nodes in real-time at Theta website! At the time of writing, there are 719 Pre-Guardian Nodes / Edge Cachers and 8 Enterprise Validators.
Moreover, last week, Binance.US shared the next batch of digital assets going through their evaluation through their framework for listing on the Binance.US marketplace. THETA is one of the tokens Binance.US is examining to ensure it meets its listing criteria for Binance.US. More to follow!
“Our mission is to make video (and all data) delivery more efficient and cheaper for platforms, while giving users the opportunity to earn token rewards for their contributions of bandwidth/computer resources. As data delivery increase with 4k and 8k video and beyond (increasing 5x in just a few years), this will become more and more important and position Theta to solve this problem.”
- Wes Levitt, Head of Strategy at Theta Labs
Development
GitHub metrics:
Theta has frequent commits to the collection of repositories.
Developer activity (from Coinlib.io):
Phase 1 of Littlstar x Theta begins tomorrow:
Premium content drops in one days! Live stream top #Esports competitors through your PlayStation®4 with Littlstar and Theta_Network live December 20th. Watch for free with limited access, or buy a Littlstar Premium License with this link for non-stop action.
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 SLIVER.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 SLIVER.tv is just the beginning!
Awareness and social encounters
December 11th, 2019: Theta Network’s AMA was recently held in Oddgems Telegram group.
The entire AMA session, approximately 45 minutes long had some amazing questions which were equally answered by Wes Levitt, Head of Strategy for Theta Labs, is transcript-ed below.
Oddgems: Please give us a short introduction about who you are and what’s your role in Theta team and also our audiences would love a short introduction about Theta Network?
Sure, Theta Network is a decentralized video delivery protocol that allows users to relay video streams p2p with other nearby users and be rewarded for it. Theta integrates at the level of the video platform, allowing them to save on their video delivery (CDN) costs and engaging their users via token rewards. For users, they are incentivized to contribute to the network by earning tokens for each video segment shared with another user on the network
As Head of Strategy for Theta Labs, my role is focused on marketing/press, business operations, and our overall strategy using blockchain to work with enterprise customers.
When will Theta Team plan to do a geo-specific stress testing on any platform (like Dlive) with millions of concurrent users sharing bandwidth?This will be a litmus test and we will understand the True capacity of the network. Also, with such large number of micro transactions being generated every second ,how does Theta Network plan to handle pruning?
We do stress testing internally, but even with DLive it’s still quite a ways from millions of concurrents. Even Twitch has only barely broken 1m concurrents maybe three times ever. Theta can handle DLive’s peaks in the 10s of thousands already, and our dev team is always rolling out further scaling measures to our p2p streaming protocol.
The blockchain tps has not been the bottleneck so far, since most micropayments can be pushed to layer 2. In the future, some of the work done on privacy protocols that reduce tx/block size could be used. We do have a system built in for pruning, but that’s more about reducing the blockchain’s aggregate size, not so much individual transactions
Can you please talk a bit about why you feel Theta needs blockchain, the importance of the token in the Art platform. What does the Theta solve and what is coming that might increase the use and need to stake or use the token? what’s your business model?
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 effiicient 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.
What killer features Theta has that are ahead of the competition and how does intend to open up the technology to the community and to researchers so it can be continuously improved on?
Our edge is our go-to-market strategy, aided by early investments in the company by Samsung NEXT (their venture arm) in 2016 and 2019. Through our relationship with Samsung we have made strong inroads not only with their business groups (VR, Visual Display, others not announced) but with other players in the Korean market such as CJ Hello. As we launch Guardian Nodes in Q1, governance will shift to a decentralized, community model. That combined with releasing more dev tools and a dev portal will help jump start an open source community, further reducing the reliance on Theta Labs.
Rest in the space and minimal product, where do you see your product actually being used by the community and solving the real world problem?
You can see it live on https://www.sliver.tv/ video platform right now, with more platforms coming soon. Users on SLIVER can earn TFUEL for relaying video streams to other users in their area
How Theta is different from other projects in the crypto space? & what problems Theta network intends to solve in terms of achieving mass adoption if in the coming months? What are your short term goals and what are your plans to accomplish those goals?
One of the biggest differences is we focus on a user experience that a casual user can understand, and integration with platforms with strong existing userbases. 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.
Today, the development and deployment of blockchain protocols and applications fail to offer enterprises the scalability, distributed governance and enhanced confidentiality they want without surrendering the inherent security and immutability they demand. So tell me why do companies ,traders choose Theta’s Solution for their business? What’s advantages?
There’s a lot to address there, so in brief:
- Scalability: given Theta’s video/data delivery use case, much can be pushed to layer 2 which allows for higher ‘effective’ tps. There’s absolutely no reason for a $0.00001 micro-payment for a single video segment to be an onchain tx
- Distributed governance: We are making great strides toward this with community-run guardian nodes in Q1, Blockchain Ventures running a validator node today and with other enterprise validator nodes coming soon
- Enhanced confidentiality: This hasn’t been a particular request or pain point from what we’ve seen. Platforms need existing levels of confidentiality ex. for DRM of copywritten content, but beyond that it hasn’t been top of mind for them from what we’ve seen.
Advantages are that they save 50%+ on CDN costs, while gaining a more engaged, loyal userbase via token rewards.
When the network grows with adoption. Is there any concern for how Internet Service Providers will respond to their customers sharing out their bandwidth.
It is possible, though in the past with ex. BitTorrent the ISPs were primarily concerned with illegal sharing, not the amount of data. Since our go-to-market is to partner with the content rights holders, not illicit filing sharing, that should be less of a concern. As 5G rolls out and upload bandwidth increases, Theta should benefit as there are established use cases for higher download speeds, not so much for upload. We’ve actually heard major telecoms tell us straight up that 5G upload speed is an awesome solution still looking for a problem
Investors need to fully consider the market volatility we are in right now. With this in mind, who are which target group of audience are you after? And How do you convince them on joining?
We are targeting video platforms, both startup and enterprise, that can benefit from Theta making their CDN stack more efficient. Going forward we are evaluating expanding Theta use case to generalized data delivery in cases where a p2p network can operate effectively (many concurrents), like file patches, OS updates, etc. When a new Fortnite patch goes out you have millions of downloads in short period of time, perfect use cases for p2p with high file availability
How do you come with the idea of THETA?
The Theta project was borne out of the video platform SLIVER.tv. As a startup esports video platform, our CDN bill pushing HD and VR video was enormous and not sustainable given our run rate. We raised a Series A round led by DHVC and at the time Dovey Wan from DHVC joined our board, and helped guide our thinking toward using a p2p, blockchain-based protocol to reduce our dependency on traditional CDNs (and with it our costs). We quickly realized that Theta was something many video platforms could benefit from and shifted toward driving adoption of Theta protocol.
And does this mean that countries with minimal internet capacities can stream HD contents like 2k and 4k or even 1080p contents?
Theta can potentially enable this for Video-on-Demand content (VOD) since you can be pulling segments from users who already downloaded the content, though for livestreaming there are still challenges. In a live setting, p2p is still limited by the download speed of a network; it can optimize, but it can’t make the data travel faster than the network infrastructure’s physical limits.
When will Theta Mainnet 2.0 launch? The Guardian Nodes will launch on Theta Mainnet 2.0; Can you introduce the operation mechanism and the function of “Guardian Nodes”?
Mainnet 2.0 will launch in March 2020, and will center around Guardian Nodes launching on the Theta mainnet. This is culmination of Theta’s multi-BFT consensus design that combines a smaller validator committee with a second layer of 100s-1000s fo Guardian Nodes that finalize blocks and act as a check on malicious or otherwise non-functional validator nodes. Along with this transition we have many associated releases such as a developer protal, new integration tools for video/data platforms to start using Theta, etc. In short, the main goal of Theta Mainnet 2.0 is to decentralize governance and put in the hands of all the stakeholders in the Theta ecosystem — the community / stakers, video platforms, blockchain ecosystem providers, etc.
What is the mission and the vision of Theta? What kind of problem will Theta solve?
Our mission is to make video (and all data) delivery more efficient and cheaper for platforms, while giving users the opportunity to earn token rewards for their contributions of bandwidth/computer resources. As data delivery increase with 4k and 8k video and beyond (increasing 5x in just a few years), this will become more and more important and position Theta to solve this problem.
Inactive and useless states are the biggest issues that are happening with Dapps. Seems to have very many DApps have few use cases, not even use cases. What did the team do to solve problems like this happening on the Theta platform?
I think inactive dapps are probably not the issue as much as lack of useful dapps. So as long as we can ensure Theta is integrated with enough major platforms and provides real value to them, that will outweigh any question of inactive dapps. There are plenty of useless internet sites, but it doesn’t distract me from the ones I find vital everyday.
Why did Theta choose to build on Ethereum platform and not other platforms such as Neo, Stellar, Tron, ..?
Theta is actually a standalone blockchain; the Theta token was originally launched as an ERC20 token, but was swapped to the native token on Theta blockchain in March 2019. We did this because our use case of data delivery specific needs, to where purpose building the chain makes sense. Since a micro-transaction for fractions of a penny doesn’t need to be onchain each time, it made sense to focus on Layer 2 from day 1 and only use the chain for settlement and large value transfers. None of the other platforms seemed to focus on this, or were PoW, or had some other issue that made it unappealing to build on.
What major milestones has Theta achieved so far? What is develop plan in the future?
Our biggest accomplishments are launching the Theta mainnet, integrating fully with SLIVER.tv video platform, and our work with Samsung Smart TVs which we continue to expand now. Going forward, check out our 2020 roadmap here.
There’s a new project offering similar services to Theta and may be potential competition. Is the team aware of VideoCoin $VID and what are the differences between the two? CDN costs, etc.
Yes, we are aware of them and watch competing projects to understand how they are approaching some of the same problems we are. I think the key difference is again our go-to-market, we jumped right in to working with video platform partners and meeting with many more that weren’t ready to work with us (you learn more from the latter!). From that we have developed a real focus on what platforms and their users actually want, and build from there. We think that sets us apart and is probably why our protocol is landing better with these potential partners. I know VideoCoin for example has some great talent on their team, but when I look at their product so far it seems complicated even to me as someone in the space, let alone to a video platform engineering lead or product manager that doesn’t know blockchain. That seems to me like a tough path to adoption.
Where can I spend my Theta tokens? Are there any use cases for it?
Theta Tokens are not meant to be a currency for consumer purchases, but rather are used to stake on Theta blockchain and participate in block production, which earns you TFUEL tokens (the 2nd native token of the blockchain). Your stake in Theta blockchain will also give you the same rights to govern the network and vote on network upgrades.
Main stream Blockchain adoption seems to be coming as noticed from the Samsung Integration theta into smart TVs,Funded from Sony Innovation Fund.What is your views and thought about mass adoption?
I think mass adoption is inevitable, but it will definitely be selective and not come all at once. It also won’t be for every blockchain/token out there — many (or most) will fail. This shouldn’t come as a surprise at all — 95% of ALL ventures fail, and blockchain is not somehow an exception.
That said, I think we are starting to see the seeds of mass adoption, whether it’s our work in Samsung TVs, JP Morgan launching their stablecoin on an Ethereum clone, Enjin items being used by Microsoft, etc. It seems like it’s taking a long time, but it’s actually progressing pretty quick by most historical standards of tech adoption. The nature of public crypto markets makes emotions run high with big $ amounts, but we think it’s important to keep a longer time horizon. If you compare the last three years, there are huge improvements in enterprise use, custody and institutional trading, etc. Things are moving in the right direction, it just takes time.
Understand that there were some Quality/ Due Diligence processes at Partner’s end for holding back on the announcement of the 2 Enterprise Validators that are currently on-boarded on Theta Main-net. Can you please provide more info on when these processes can be finished and by when We can expect an official announcement on the Names of these Enterprise validators?
Sure, it was not quality / DD issues as much as just corporate approval processes, their engineers getting temp pulled for other assignments, not unusual for big companies. I’m not going to speculate on timelines given that we don’t control that process, but I can say that those 2 (and others) are very much still happening and none have in any way backed away from their plans to launch nodes on Theta blockchain. Lesson learned not to hint too much to the community when delays can happen outside of our control, but the good news is they are all still in play, and will be worth it when they launch!
AMA Recap:-Theta Labs X Crypto^^Nation:
What are the biggest challenges for Theta Token to be successful making decentralized video?
The biggest challenges are 1. distributed applications are difficult to scale, and 2. our go-to-market strategy is to partner with existing video platforms and enterprise partners, which often are not experienced with blockchain. For the first issue, it takes a lot of dev work but we have a very talented team. For the second, it just takes a lot of education on our part. We also prioritize working with companies like Samsung that are committed to using blockchain technology.
Can you give some examples of what sort of projects we may see come out of the THETA Network in the future?
In addition to our live pilot programs with Samsung VR and MBN, we are in the process of integrating Theta with video platforms like DLive, CJ Hello in Korea, and Bitmovio. In the future, besides just more video platforms, we are expanding the Theta relaying to other types of data delivery that are suited for peer-to-peer. Examples like game patches, OS updates, etc. that have many users downloading the files at the same time (many concurrent users that make for a strong P2P network).
What do you see as the greatest benefit to the third world from the Theta project?
The greatest benefit is that anyone can contribute to the network if you have excess bandwidth to relay video streams, so the barrier to entry is low. Ideally, users from all over the world will contribute because it will make for wider geographic coverage for the decentralized network. Viewers can also see more efficient video / less buffering in regions where there are many users but video infrastructure isn’t as strong.
Why in Theta Network are there two types of tokens: THETA and Theta Fuel? What are the roles of these two tokens?
The native tokens on Theta blockchain are:
THETA: used for staking and governing the protocol
TFUEL (Theta Fuel): used as payments for video/data delivery, and the gas for transactions onchain.
We split the functions into two tokens because there was an inherent conflict between THETA which should be staked for network security and therefore illiquid, and TFUEL which must be frequently transacted and liquid enough for users and video platforms to use.
Theta Network featured at the Samsung Developer Conference to demo integration in smart TVs, what advantages did this boost to the THETA ECOSYSTEM AND WOULD WE SEE A FULL INTEGRATION OF THETA TO ALL SMART TVS? The issues of scalability, security and interoperability cannot be swept under the carpet. How does theta rose above these. Also what’s your TPS to handle 21st century video needs?
Our work with Samsung is ongoing, we can’t talk specifics yet about timeline for full integration, but Samsung sees it as a strong opportunity to drive TV sales by introducing rewards to their users
Scalability is an ongoing challenge, and our dev work continues on that. However, the nature of Theta use case means many transactions can be moved offchain to a layer 2 type solution. Ex., every single $.01 TFUEL payment does not need to be onchain, only opening/closing of payment channels or if a large value transaction.
The issue of decentralization vs. centralization is very challenging. No project is absolutely on one end or the other of the spectrum. What is your solution with this issue?
Our solution is to build mostly in-house (centralized) and open-source the protocol as it develops, and move toward more decentralized governance over time, which allows us to develop quickly. Theta governance is moving to community-run nodes in Q1 and also validator nodes are starting to be run by enterprise partners like Blockchain.
What is the biggest difference of Theta to attract creators to abandon traditional methods such as Youtube, Stream … to use the Theta ecosystem?
Theta is actually a delivery protocol at the infrastructure layer. Our goal is for platforms like YouTube to integrate Theta, they aren’t competitors.
How the user network is affecting the speed of THETA streams? Does it have any upgradation plan when 5G is implemented completely? How’s your CDN will perform?
Theta works in conjunction with existing CDNs, so that at minimum performance cannot be worse than existing systems. Typically, 50%+ of delivery can be moved to Theta p2p network. Theta will be very interesting to combine with 5G because 5G will have very high upload speeds, but most use cases are for download. Telecoms are actively looking for ways to utilize that upload speed/bandwidth.
Akamai, AWS and more are similar projects like THETA, how THETA is better than them?
Theta works in conjunction with existing CDNs like those — no platform with paying users can switch fully to p2p network, as quality of service is most important. A hybrid system is the best solution.
Live video streaming is expected to 82% of all internet traffic by 2020. Let’s IMAGINE and assume that all this TRAFFIC will be on Theta structures. Is Theta’s infrastructure capable of handling this? What disadvantages of central CDNs have caused to BORN THETA and what does Theta OFFER with its decentralized structure?
1. Not today, but in time as the protocol continues to scale.
2. I’m not sure what you mean by born, but Theta offers video platforms the chance to reduce costs and make delivery more efficient.
Theta has Solid Backing With Big Investing companies, Also Partnered With Big Brand Like SamsungVR, Silver.TV ETC. Can you tell us more about your partnerships, what is the role of these partners in your project? How they are helping out in your Project? Any new partnership in pipeline? AELF another Crypto project Investor in Theta Project. What is the relation between Theta & AELF?
It varies a lot by partner — some like Samsung see blockchain is strategic, so we work with many different product groups to help improve their offerings. Others are more targeted, like DLIve video platform just wanting to use Theta for reducing their CDN costs.
What role do you think THETA will play in making blockchain highly adaptable in the worldwide stage?
We are working with video platforms with millions of existing users, so we are excited about showing these consumers how blockchain can benefit them. We think that can be more effective than starting from complicated dapps that the average consumer won’t understand.
I’ve been reading your roadmap and there’s something I’m confused of that caught my attention now: Power global data content delivery including static and dynamic web content. Can you elaborate it a little bit further about this subject since 2020 roadmap seems pretty incomplete yet?
In layman’s terms, that means we want to use Theta for use cases other than video, like game patches, OS updates, web content, etc. It opens up more possible uses and it’s quite feasible from a technical standpoint, in many ways we are actually starting with the most challenging one in live video.
What are the plans to expand in different regions? Will you outsource the team/skills or keep it centralized and set up new offices?
Yes, we have started hiring in Korea and plan to open a a location in Singapore as well to focus on SE Asia region.
Staking seem to be popular right now on many blockchain project to encourage investors to hold tokens and make it healthful for project ecosystem. Does Theta support this as well? If yes, what will requirement of a Node and a Validator node be? And how does reward base on?
Yes, our staking is still in a closed beta, but will go live in Q1. You can find some early info here.
Can you clear us one thing.. What is #THETA Vision?? Replacement of YouTube or Platform Like Youtube? There is not Much detail about Your RoadMap Of 2020 in your website. Can you tell us what milestone you are planing to achieve in 2020?
Actually, our vision is for Theta to be the infrastructure for those platforms!
In 2020, our primary goals are 1. launch staking via Guardian Nodes, 2. grow the number of video platforms using Theta, and 3. continue to decentralize governance.
“Mainnet launch” is one of the many factors affecting the value of a digital asset and this will attract many users to invest in a Blockchain Company .What are your plans about that? If Yes ,What are your upgrade and integration of your Mainnet?
Theta Mainnet went live on March 15, 2019. Our “Mainnet 2.0” upgrade in March will be when Guardian Nodes launch with staking governance becomes decentralized.
What is THETA video routing architecture? How’s does it works and how it is different from any other of your competitors? Rewarding viewers makes them greedy, many might use bot & other hacks to get $TFUEL How THETA plans to prevent them?
1. It allows users watching the same content to relay it between others p2p, reducing the reliance on centralized CDNs.
2. Yes, that’s a major issue we’ve had to be vigilant about. We monitor for what appears to be bot farms or other inorganic use and put in restrictions that disfavors them from the network
Which benefit can Resource Oriented Micropayment Pool on THETA network bring to users and how will its mechanism work?
It’s a layer2 protocol (like Lightning for bitcoin) that allows to move many micropayments offchain and increase effective throughput.
The Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping recently made a positive speech about blockchain technology. What do you think will change in the world’s future and how may it impact Theta ?
It will be great if they open up to let corporations use blockchain, as there are many video platforms in China that could benefit from Theta!
I saw Theta biggest challenges had been the high costs of delivering video to various parts of the world, and this problem will only getting bigger with HD, 4K and higher quality videos, What are you planning to solve this problem? Can you explain this?
As video platforms costs rise from HD video and higher, Theta will help them manage those costs and let them spend more on what users want, content.
What is ultimate vision for the Theta validator nodes and governance? Briefly tell about it.
We want many diverse validators that each have a strategic interest in the network (i.e. they are also users of the network, not just financially interested)
As a Video Streaming Platform, you need to have a global reach. Where do you source your traffic foundations in search of active users globally? Some other Project Like Video Coin, VIDY Coin and many other Working On Same Business Model. How Theta is Better than his Competitors? What advantages Theta Has but not Other?
We partner with existing platforms so like today, they provide content.
Theta has the advantage of traction with major platforms, aided by investments by Samsung and Sony in our company.
You have big names in your advisory board, but the concern is how you will compete with platforms like TWITCH and YT Gaming? How the advisors are shaping THETA?
Theta is not competing, those are potential partners. Advisors mostly act as experts in their fields that we can draw on as we are planning the network design or go-to-market strategy.
What problems do you see occurring in the blockchain industry nowadays and how does your project aims to solve these problems?
A big problem is not focusing on user experience, building protocols that are interesting and complicated but users can’t or won’t use them. That’s fine if it’s a hobby, but you shouldn’t be taking investor money and then building something no one will use. Blockchain won’t see mass adoption that way.
What benefits will a partnership with Klaytn bring? Is Theta focusing on development in Korea?
Yes, Korea is a big focus. We are heading back to Korea to work with Samsung teams in February, and building with other platforms there as well. The Klaytn relationship is really key because they are helping build the SLIVER.tv Korea app we made by leveraging their huge reach as part of Kakao.
What are the items that THETA is focusing on solving and developing? What made you think of this project? Are you a game enthusiast?
We started the Theta project as an outgrowth of our SLIVER.tv esports platform, so yes our background in gaming was a factor! But it was more that our startup video platform had huge CDN costs for esports streams, and we wanted to address that.
How did THETA survive in this long bear market and what difficulties have you encountered during this period?
We were conservative with project spending, raised additional investment from Blockchain and Samsung, and focused on development!
There are a lot of decentralized E-sports streaming project in the market, what is the competitive benefit of THETA?
Theta is focused on all video content, esports was just the first implementation.
Why is it said that THETA can be seen as the “World Cache”?
As the network grows large enough, any in-demand video content or data can be cached on a dense mesh network so that it’s always available.
Many projects have tried or are trying to create mesh networks competing with centralized CDNs. Many of them offer cool tech, but aren’t able to put their developments into life, just because they aren’t able to incentivize and organize people on whom the network would be based. How does Theta intend to solve this problem?
Our solution is to work with existing platforms and form a hybrid CDN stack, since pure p2p has a lot of challenges (as those past projects have found out)
What is the leading Utility of your token?
The primary use of THETA is to stake to the network, allowing your to earn TFUEL, participate in block production, and govern the network.
Upcoming events:
No updates.
Finance
Live Network Statistics:
December 19th, 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: 719
Enterprise Validator Nodes: 8
For information on Theta Guardian Nodes and how to join, see the announcement blog.
Wes Levitt (in official Theta Network Telegram group): “Next month with our explorer UI update, there will be a separate page listing all staked token addresses, breakdown and charts, etc.”
Theta markets:
The information is taken from Coinlib.io.
Binance.US shares the next batch of digital assets going through their evaluation through their framework for listing on the Binance.US marketplace:
THETA is one of the tokens Binance.US is examining to ensure it meets their listing criteria for Binance.US
Roadmap
An updated Theta Roadmap:
Q4 2019
- Guardian Node selection and launch on testnet
- Edge Cacher beta client improvements
- Concurrent Video-on-Demand (VoD) support on SLIVER.tv
- Theta Explorer upgrades — analytics, visualizations, staking information
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
The most significant change from the previous Theta roadmap is extending the launch date of Guardian Nodes, which they know the Theta community is eager to run, but the process for the first users to get onboarded will happen shortly. In Q4, they will release the full Guardian Node software for use on Theta testnet, and a small group of users (likely starting with 100 nodes, with a second batch of 100 to follow a few weeks later) will be able to run these nodes that will fully participate in Theta’s Multi-BFT consensus. These Guardian Nodes on testnet will generate Theta Fuel (TFUEL) at the normal rate they will on mainnet (initially, new TFUEL generation at 5% annual of total supply). For any TFUEL a user earns by running a Guardian Node on the testnet, they will get the same amount of actual TFUEL on the Theta mainnet, even during this testing period before Guardian Nodes move to mainnet. It is extremely valuable to have real users testing the Guardian Nodes, both to test the software and evaluate user behavior. To do that the right way, users need to have real economic incentives!
The final criteria for selection of the first 100 Guardian Nodes to participate on testnet will be released shortly. The most likely process will be to start with all the PGN participants who meet the hardware requirements to run a Guardian Node and have staked the minimum 100K THETA. Then, both the number of THETA staked and uptime history will be weighted to get to a final ranking of the top 100. The team is still fine tuning that formula to ensure it is as fair as possible and will share that soon. Note — since the PGN has only been released for Windows, they will reserve a portion of the spaces for Mac/Linux users out there! Also, remember that just because you are selected in the first 100 doesn’t mean it’s permanent; you do still need to be a responsible and consistent Guardian Node, and if you are included in the first 100 and run the node unreliably or maliciously on the testnet, your node will be removed from the Guardian Node set and another user will get the chance to step up.
Check out the latest updates on TFUEL integration with SLIVER.tv at the TFUEL streaming roadmap — this will continue to be updated as new features are completed and added to the roadmap.
SLIVER.tv Roadmap:
Partnerships and team members
No updates.
Rumors
Twitter:
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. There is a slight increase in the number of subscribers of Theta social media channels these weeks.
Official Telegram group — Discussions on development, 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.
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.
