Theta Network: Mainnet 2.0 on May 27th, 10 THETA Live Embed partners, >50 registrants on the Theta Hackathon already, World Poker Tour 24/7 now on THETA.tv, Changpeng Zhao and Tim Draper on VBW2020 powered by Theta

Published in

Paradigm

11 min readMay 6, 2020

Biweekly update 22nd April — 6th May

Welcome, Theta community to our May update on the Network! We’re so excited for the next phase of the Theta decentralized streaming network, the Theta Mainnet 2.0 launch! It will happen on Wednesday, May 27th. Stay tuned!
One of the silver linings 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 began on April 22nd. The hackathon will run for two months and feature project feedback from Theta team, as well as other marquee advisors and supporters of the Theta Network.
For those who are not familiar, a few weeks ago, 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 GFUEL, the Official Energy Drink of Esports. Good news is, now you can watch THETA.tv live on Sizzle Popcorn using Theta Live Embed. And don’t forget to check out THETA.tv embed now CruzCtrl website, on Sweeps and EasternMediaGG. Furthermore, new content on the way at Theta: the World Poker Tour is now live on THETA.tv. Read more about the news on WPT.com and start watching right now on WPT.THETA.TV! More THETA Live Embed partners coming soon with their streamlined new integration process!
Virtual Blockchain Week 2020 hosted by Joel Comm of Bad Crypto Podcast and powered by Theta took place. The podcast was joined by a dynamic mix of trailblazers, emerging tech, futurists, and thought leaders, including Changpeng Zhao and Tim Draper. If you miss their sessions, you can watch the replay over at the conference’s website.
And last but not least, the Theta Network is booming! At the time of writing, there are 773 Edge Cachers, 384 Guardian Nodes, and 11 Enterprise Validators, including Samsung, Binance, Blockchain and gumi Cryptos Capital. Testing is proceeding well and on target for the launch of Theta Mainnet 2.0. The Theta team is hard at work (from home) and they’ll have more exciting releases coming along the way. Take care and stay tuned!

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.

The primary reason for pushing back the release date is simply to allow for more testing of the Mainnet 2.0 code. 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.

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

Testing of peak concurrent viewers on Theta Network:

May — 1m+ concurrent viewers

Testing of number of Guardian Nodes participating in Theta consensus

May — 750+ Guardian Nodes

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.

Awareness and social encounters

April 29th — May 2nd, 2020: Virtual Blockchain Week 2020 hosted by Bad Crypto Podcast and powered by Theta

Since April 22nd, 2020: Theta hackathon hosted by DevPost

One of the silver linings 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 began 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.

Upcoming events:

The team 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 the 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: May 6th, 2020

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.

Edge Cachers: 773

Guardian Nodes: 384

Enterprise Validator Nodes: 11

Information from Theta explorer:

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

A step by step video on how to install the PGN/UEC.

Latest PGN client download link for Windows only.

If you want to become a Guardian node click here.

Theta markets:

Information from Coinlib.io:

Network

Theta.tv, formerly known as Sliver.tv, is an e-sports live streaming site that has already implemented the Theta Network and are now able to offload ~50%+ CDN costs on an ongoing basis. TFuel has been integrated into the site platform and is earned by viewers streaming content to peers, can be donated to streamers, or used to purchase goods in the Theta.tv store.

THETA.tv Launch AMA

Roadmap

Theta Roadmap:

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

THETA.tv Roadmap:

Partnerships and team members

Theta Network adopted by 10 partner sites and counting through THETA Live Embed:

THETA Live Embed, the turnkey product that allows 24/7 THETA.tv Esports live streaming content to be added to almost any website, blog, or social media platform, is now live with 10 partner sites! 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.

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. This ease of use has led to 10 partners already going live with Theta Live Embed, and more on the way every week!

In addition to the progress being made in driving Theta adoption through more sites, the team is also nearing completion of a game-changing payments integration for THETA Live Embed partners — more on that soon! It’s all part of our strategy to get Theta tech in the hands of as many partners as possible, getting users earning TFUEL, and showing the value Theta Network can bring to all stakeholders in video streaming.

You can see THETA Live Embed in action on each site here:

Vast

To learn more about THETA Live Embed or to integrate it into your own site, visit us at embed.theta.tv.

Watch THETA.tv streamers and earn TFuel directly on the Sizzle Popcorn website:

The World Poker Tour is now live on THETA.tv:

Recently, Theta Network partnered with Contentos, a decentralized global content ecosystem

Contentos, a public-chain project for the global digital content industry, has partnered with the decentralized video delivery protocol Theta Network, which will be integrated with the COS.TV video platform to improve user experience and reduce the bandwidth cost of video content delivery.

COS.TV platform has achieved huge growth in 2019. According to Alexa ranking, in January 2020, the traffic of COS.TV has surpassed Steemit.com. However, the issue coming is the rapid rise in content delivery costs. By adding Theta Network to Contentos’ video infrastructure, we can reduce these costs by 50% or more, thereby enabling COS.TV to achieve more stable and sustainable growth, and adding a new way to increase user engagement through token rewards.

Earlier, Samsung and CJ Hello, two of the largest media companies in South Korea, have also agreed on a partnership with Theta Labs, which will use Theta’s decentralized video delivery.

Also, Theta collaborated with Suterusu to add privacy features to Theta blockchain:

Suterusu brings ZCash-level privacy to any blockchain platform or application. It integrates a state of the art trustless ZK-SNARK scheme with nearly constant size proofs, and efficient proof generation /verification. Suterusu provides privacy protection for several major blockchains and dapps, such as BTC and ETH, as well as DeFi products like Standard Tokenization Protocol and SWFT. Other public blockchains such as Neo and IOST have also negotiated with Suterusu to build layer-2 protocols to support privacy protection on their networks.

Adding robust privacy features will be just part of the continued technical improvements made to Theta Mainnet 2.0 throughout 2020, all designed around the primary goal of adoption — making the Theta protocol easier for platforms to use and more aligned with their goals and needs.