Theta Validator unstaking to accelerate future ecosystem growth

Last year in August 2020, Theta Labs announced its plan to unstake 30m THETA tokens (14% of its staked THETA at the time) to fund ecosystem growth, and to further the goal of decentralizing the protocol with a more diverse landscape of THETA stakers. Much has been accomplished in the year since then, Theta Mainnet 3.0 launched the Elite Edge Node network, a full smart contract platform, the ThetaDrop NFT platform among other milestones. During this time, Theta blockchain staking also reached all-time highs with 66% of all THETA tokens staked and 42% of all TFUEL staked as of today.

We’re proud of these achievements, but it’s only the beginning for the Theta Ecosystem! With a renewed focus on Theta developer community and $1,000,000 in new hackathon prizes, the upcoming launch of TDROP, and even more focus on our decentralized video and entertainment infrastructure, there is plenty in store for 2022 and beyond. To help accelerate this growth, Theta Labs is planning to unstake an additional 15M Theta from its validators (accounting for ~8% of Theta Labs total current stake). These tokens will be used primarily for new blockchain developer hires, marketing, business development and strategic partnership incentives, Theta Hackathon prize funding, and other grants to Theta ecosystem projects under development. This also furthers the decentralization of the Theta network with Theta Labs reducing its staking percentage from ~28% to ~25% of the total Theta staked among all validators and guardians.

These initiatives are key to achieving the goals set out in the Theta Ecosystem 2022 white paper, maintaining Theta Network’s leadership position as the premier blockchain serving the media and entertainment space. We are excited to continue driving innovative applications across livestream video, decentralized video relaying, edge compute and storage, NFTs, live experiences, and much more.

The Theta team