Theta Protocol upgrades coming December 10th including smart contracts to Mainnet
Major updates are coming soon to the Theta blockchain, designed to expand its functionality and respond to the top community requests. These protocol updates will significantly increase the use cases of Theta blockchain, drive value to the protocol, and further decentralize the governance and security of Theta as a whole. The protocol changes will go live at approximately 12pm (Noon) PST on Thursday, December 10th. The target block for the upgrades to go into effect is 8,411,427. This upgrade will not require existing tokenholders to take any action or move any tokens — there is no swap of any kind. Key upgrades and enhancements include:
Smart contracts go live on Theta mainnet
After several months of testing on Theta testnet, we’re excited to finally bring Turing-complete smart contracts to the Theta mainnet. This opens the door to numerous use cases in video streaming and beyond, from token investments in streamers, to automated splits of TFUEL rewards between platform/streamers/users, to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) representing top content creators. Since the Theta Virtual Machine is fully compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), porting over existing Ethereum-based contracts is simple and thousands of smart contract developers can easily jump to building on Theta. Between the Theta Labs team and Theta community, many projects are already in the works including decentralized exchanges (DEXs), staking pools, and more. Additionally, for ease of use we will release smart contract documentation shortly, a Metamask-like wallet plugin for Chrome, and UI tools for minting new tokens built on Theta blockchain.
Guardian Node staking minimum reduced to 1,000 THETA
The minimum amount of THETA to stake to a Guardian Node will be lowered from 10,000 THETA to 1,000 THETA. This will permit even more tokenholders to contribute to protocol security by staking, and will further decentralize the network. This also lowers the limit to 1,000 THETA for additional staking transactions after the initial stake (i.e. adding to your existing staked tokens). With this change we expect the network to push well beyond the 1,450 Guardian Nodes currently staking THETA tokens.
Javascript SDK
A JavaScript SDK will be released to make it easier for Theta community developers to interface with the Theta blockchain. The functionality is similar to Ethereum’s web3.js and is aiming to provide a developer-friendly framework for DApps to interact with the Theta blockchain. Through the SDK, a DApp can easily query for blocks and transactions, sign and issue transactions to the blockchain, as well as deploy and interact with smart contracts. The SDK can also be used as an automated unit test framework for the developers to thoroughly test and validate the functionalities of their smart contracts before production deployment.
Wallet / Explorer updates
Theta Web Wallet and Explorer will also be upgraded to include new smart contract features. Smart contracts on Theta can be launched directly from the Theta Web Wallet using your existing addresses, in an easy-to-use GUI. The Theta Explorer will also be redesigned to more easily inspect and monitor smart contracts on Theta Mainnet. Similar to Etherscan.io, the Theta Explorer will allow developers to upload and verify the source code of their smart contracts, query the read-only interface of the smart contracts, and record the Theta VM returns and emitted events for ease of debugging.
