Theta Network — Growth plans and staked token use

Dear Theta supporters,

I hope everyone is staying safe during these uncertain COVID times. After the last few years of building, it seems that blockchain technology is reaching new heights in 2020 with tremendous developments in DeFi, layer-2 scaling, and adoption of BTC as a store of value by prominent businesses and hedge funds.

Theta Network is making great strides in 2020 as well, with Multi-BFT consensus going live with our Main-net 2.0 now with more than 500m THETA staked to Theta Network, our partnership with Google Cloud joining as an Enterprise Validator Node, and upcoming integrations with GameTalkTalk, Moviebloc and other video apps and platforms. Recognition is starting to come from the broader crypto space as well, with Coinbase announcing that Theta is among the projects under consideration for listing. More importantly, with a greater portion of the world population staying-at-home due to COVID, we’re seeing tremendous growth with streaming video and all types of data. We’re bullish on the demand for Theta protocol and platform in the next 12–18 months.

Like many other businesses and corporations, we took a conservative approach to our expenses beginning March of this year anticipating a prolonged economic downturn. With the help of a strategic investment round last year from Blockchain Ventures and Samsung NEXT, Theta Labs is fully funded through 2021. However, we now realize that this is the best time, in fact, to accelerate our growth. To sign up more enterprise validators. To bring the largest streaming platforms to Theta. To 100x our guardian network, 1000x our video bandwidth shared. :)

With this in mind, we plan to unstake ~30M THETA from our validator node in the coming months, approximately 14% of Theta Labs’ current stake. The tokens will be used over the next 12 months as growth capital for the project, we’re going to double down our investments across the board. We’ll be hiring and expanding the Theta team including R&D and business development to accelerate platform adoption, driving new marketing initiatives, hiring a new PR firm, funding development in Theta ecosystem through more Theta Hackathons and ecosystem developer grants — to name a few.

We believe that the timing for this move is now, with blockchain technology momentum running high and Theta leading the way as the most successful video blockchain project. Our long-term goal is to drive sustainable revenue sources and reduce the protocol’s reliance on the core Theta development team. To become decentralized. Self sustaining. Self governing.

Mitch Liu

CEO, Theta Labs