Theta Network: Mainnet 2.0 coming on May 27th, Code is public on GitHub and is currently in testing, Another 100 GN added to the testnet, BCGW podcast with Mitch Liu, The NASA x SpaceX CRS-20 launch was streamed LIVE on THETA.tv, THETA.tv embed now on Sweeps and EasternMediaGG

Published in

Paradigm

11 min readMar 12, 2020

Biweekly update 27th February — 12th March

Welcome, Theta community to Paradigm’s regular update on the Network!
After careful deliberation, the Theta team has decided to move the official launch of Theta Mainnet 2.0. It will now happen on Wednesday, May 27th. Mainnet 2.0 code is public on Theta GitHub now and is currently in testing. More release info can be found in the latest Theta blog.
The Theta Network is booming! At the time of writing, there are 716 Pre-Guardian Nodes / Edge Cachers and 10 Enterprise Validators. Moreover, the Theta Validator Node run by Blockchain is back up after adding an additional 1,209,413 THETA to their staked holdings. Decentralization of Theta governance is a key theme of 2020, with community-run Guardian Nodes coming to mainnet soon and more enterprise VNs on the way. Last week, another 100 Guardian Nodes were added to Theta testnet, soon to total more than 400! Check your PGN app for a new message if you are waiting to join. The team is seeing great results on testnet_sapphire and is aiming for the majority of THETA staked by the time Theta Mainnet 2.0 launches!
ln February, 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 was G FUEL, The Official Energy Drink of Esports. Now you can watch THETA.tv live on EasternMediaGG using Theta Live Embed. And don’t forget to check out THETA.tv embed now on Sweeps. More THETA Live Embed partners coming soon with their streamlined new integration process!
As for the social side, Theta CEO Mitch Liu recently joined Jon Jordan of PocketGamer.biz to discuss Theta and the vision of decentralized video delivery. The team also had planned a major marketing push in the lead up to Mainnet 2.0, including a marketing tour through South Korea, Hong Kong, and Vietnam and a meetup held with a Korea-based partner. With the unfortunate and tragic spread of the COVID-19 virus, their travel plans to these countries had to be postponed. While these travel restrictions may still be in place in May, this at least gives them time to re-tool the marketing efforts for Mainnet 2.0 in other directions, and give it the push that the release and the community deserves. Another silver lining of pushing Mainnet 2.0 launch to May is that it gives Theta community time to get involved in building tools and applications for the Theta ecosystem. The team has enlisted DevPost, the leading hackathon community (they are currently running hackathons for Facebook, Samsung, and EOS among many other top names), to host the 1st Theta Network virtual hackathon beginning in early April. The hackathon will run for 2 months and feature project feedback from Theta team, as well as other marquee advisors and supporters of the Theta Network.
Stay tuned for more updates soon, and the Theta Mainnet 2.0 in May!

“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.”
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):

Notice on launch of Theta Mainnet 2.0

After careful deliberation, the Theta team has decided to move the official launch of Theta Mainnet 2.0 to Wednesday, May 27th. Roughly two weeks prior to that date, the exact block height will be announced that Theta blockchain will switch to Mainnet 2.0 code.

The primary reason for pushing back the release date is simply to allow for more testing of the Mainnet 2.0 code. While the Mainnet 2.0 code is complete, and as some noticed already has been released on the Theta GitHub, there are significant changes and having just a few weeks to fully test before the projected Q1 release date was a tight window. In addition to the hundreds of Guardian Nodes that would come online on mainnet, the Mainnet 2.0 code must be run by all the major exchanges that list Theta, as well as Enterprise Validator Nodes (Binance, gumi Cryptos, Samsung NEXT, and Blockchain). Any issues arising from untested code could be disruptive to a lot of key stakeholders in Theta, so out of an abundance of caution, the decision was made to allow more time to observe the Mainnet 2.0 code functioning properly and make any improvements as needed. Also, delaying the release of Mainnet 2.0 won’t have any negative effect on work in progress with video platform partners, so that potential risk factor did not present an issue.

The Theta community, including the 300+ Guardian Nodes operating on Theta testnet, are excited to get started on Mainnet 2.0. More Guardian Nodes are being onboarded to testnet_sapphire so that when Theta Mainnet 2.0 launches the protocol will be as decentralized as possible. At the same time, the team will be running stress tests on testnet_sapphire to ensure that Theta can accommodate the necessary level of concurrent users that video platforms require.

Stress testing will tentatively follow this schedule between now and the release of Mainnet 2.0:

Testing of peak concurrent viewers on Theta Network:

March — 100k concurrent viewers
April — 500k concurrent viewers
May — 1m+ concurrent viewers

Testing of number of Guardian Nodes participating in Theta consensus

March — 500 Guardian Nodes
April — 600 Guardian Nodes
May — 750+ Guardian Nodes

Another silver lining of pushing Mainnet 2.0 launch to May is that it gives Theta community time to get involved in building tools and applications for the Theta ecosystem. The team has enlisted DevPost, the leading hackathon community (they are currently running hackathons for Facebook, Samsung, and EOS among many other top names), to host the 1st Theta Network virtual hackathon beginning in early April. The hackathon will run for 2 months and feature project feedback from Theta team, as well as other marquee advisors and supporters of the Theta Network. Additionally Theta Labs is setting aside a hackathon prize pool of $25,000 in tokens, 100% of which will be awarded to the top 3 community projects at the end of the hackathon. The team has got a few ideas of Theta blockchain tools and apps they’ll propose, but want to also give the Theta community the flexibility to build the projects they want to.

Got a project idea? Email them at support@thetatoken.org, or reach out to Wes on Telegram at @wlevitt so we can make sure you have the tools you need!

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

Blockchain Gaming World #61: Talking Theta Labs with Mitch Liu

Theta CEO Mitch Liu recently joined Jon Jordan of PocketGamer.biz to discuss Theta and the vision of decentralized video delivery.

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.

The team also had planned a major marketing push in the lead up to Mainnet 2.0, including a marketing tour through South Korea, Hong Kong, and Vietnam and a meetup held with a Korea-based partner. With the unfortunate and tragic spread of the COVID-19 virus, their travel plans to these countries had to be postponed. While these travel restrictions may still be in place in May, this at least gives them time to re-tool the marketing efforts for Mainnet 2.0 in other directions, and give it the push that the release and the community deserves.

Finance

Live Network Statistics:

March 12th, 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: 716

Enterprise Validator Nodes: 10

For information on Theta Guardian Nodes and how to join, see the announcement blog.

Another 100 Guardian Nodes added to Theta testnet, soon to total more than 400!

Check your PGN app for a new message if you are waiting to join. The team is seeing great results on testnet_sapphire + are aiming for the majority of THETA staked by the time Theta Mainnet 2.0 launches!

Information from Theta explorer:

The Theta Validator Node run by Blockchain is back up after adding an additional 1,209,413 THETA to their staked holdings. Decentralization of Theta governance is a key theme of 2020, with community-run Guardian Nodes coming to mainnet soon and more enterprise VNs on the way.

Theta markets:

Information from Coinlib.io:

Network

For those, who are a little behind of times, this January, the SIVER.tv team announced that SLIVER.tv officially renamed THETA.tv.

THETA.tv Launch AMA

THETA.tv statistics (March 12th, 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