What is Theta
Theta is a niche video-streaming-centric blockchain created with the purpose of decentralized peer-to-peer media data delivery. It was created as the blockchain solution to various problems of the live video streaming industry among which its developers highlighted poor quality, loading time, increasing global needs for data, and lack of support for content creators on centralized streaming platforms.
The history of Theta goes back to 2017 when the team behind it held a private token sale, raising $20 million by selling 30% total supply of its native THETA token. The mainnet was released in March 2018.
Theta blockchain has seen some major changes over the years with the concept of its utility token TFUEL staking and burning being introduced in December 2020. Finally, in July 2021, to suit the need of non-fungible tokens collectors Theta extended its operation field expanding its ecosystem with a native NFT marketplace while also adding a new token TDROP, designated for community incentives.
Theta Labs is a San-Francisco-based company behind the Theta blockchain which is a subsidiary of Sliver.tv, a popular esports entertainment platform focused on video streaming as well.
How does Theta work
Theta was launched as a decentralized peer-to-peer video delivery network where viewers could earn rewards for sharing their excessive bandwidth with other viewers. These rewards are issued in Theta Fuel or TFUEL tokens which are Theta’s equivalent of the gas concept on Ethereum.
The model of peer-to-peer streaming aims to resolve the existing discrepancies in how one video may have different loading times in different parts of the world. Theta is an open-source network able to host various dApps of video platforms and content providers. The proposed model also targets video platform owners who can now save up on infrastructure costs by integrating with Theta and building up the community instead.
From the technical point of view, Theta is a proof-of-stake blockchain secured through Multi-BFT Consensus, Aggregated Signature Gossip Scheme, and Resource-Oriented Micropayment Pool.
The core of the Theta protocol consists of a few layers. The first layer is secured by Validator and Guardian nodes who can stake THETA, the platform’s native token, to acquire the power to facilitate blocks. Validators propose and produce blocks which are then sealed by Guardians who oversee Validators’ activity to make sure there are no malicious actors among the lot.
The second layer is represented worldwide by Theta Edge Network. Any active viewer who wishes to relay their bandwidth to other participants may connect to the network and become an Edge Node by running specific software on their CPU. Besides relaying videos this step involves computing and storing data among other functions.
The third layer of the protocol is the p2p infrastructure for video and data delivery which is fueled by incentives for content creators and viewers.
Theta is tailored a lot like Ethereum, having its own minter that uses the THT20 token standard which may be applied to any token in the Theta ecosystem. The blockchain already created its Ethereum compatible RPC interface making it easier for dApps to migrate on Theta and increasing the overall interoperability of the network.
In the future, developers plan to enable bridges to directly connect Theta to dApps on different blockchains such as Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Polygon, and others
How to use Theta
The Theta network supports smart contracts and its VM is fully compatible with the Ethereum VM, making the porting of dApps from Ethereum to Theta possible. In July 2021, the Theta team released the 3.1.0 of the Theta app along with a Theta-Ethereum RPC adaptor project, providing support for the Ethereum RPC API.
In April 2022, Theta Labs released their plans on releasing a Theta Metachain. Planned to be officially launched in December 2022, the concept consists of an interconnected network of blockchains to allow permissionless horizontal scaling of the Theta blockchain. The aim of the Theta Metachain is to achieve “potentially unlimited transactional throughput, and 1-2 seconds, or even subsecond block finalization time”, as is written in the Theta documentation. The network will come with its own SDK to help developers in launching their own networks and connect them to the main chain.
A Theta wallet can be created offline by downloading an encrypted keystore file from the wallet website. There are also Android and iOS mobile Theta wallet apps available for download from the respective official app stores.
The Theta fees are subject to governance and as such was raised from 0.000001 TFUEL per an outgoing transaction to 0.3 TFUEL in June 2021. The same proposal raised the commissions for deploying a smart contract from 5 TFUEL to 20 TFUEL and the interaction with smart contracts from 0,25 TFUEL to 1 TFUEL. The update also introduced a burning mechanism forcing the Elite Edge Nodes to burn at least 25% of each TFUEL fee.
The THETA, TFUEL and TDROP tokens
At first, Theta involved two native tokens: THETA and TFUEL.
THETA is used for governance, as it is required from Validators and Guardians to stake a minimum of 1000 THETA. The total supply of THETA is limited to 1 billion tokens.
TFUEL is a utility token of the Theta ecosystem. It is used to power up the Theta ecosystem as payment for transactions and as an incentive to nodes for staking THETA or to relayers for sharing data. At the point of launch, there were 5 billion of total TFUEL supply. Later Theta enabled users to stake TFUEL to earn additional rewards and introduced the concept of burning excessive TFUEL supply to stabilize the network.
In August 2021, Theta expanded its tokenomics adding a new token, TDROP, to its network. It is used to incentivize THETA and TFUEL stakers as well as to boost liquidity on a newly created Theta Drop NFT marketplace. TDROP tokens will not be eligible to any ICO events and will be distributed exclusively via airdrops.
How to buy Theta THETA, TFUEL, and TDROP tokens
Theta tokens can be purchased on centralized exchanges like Binance, Hotbit, and Gate.io.
Disclaimer
To understand if Theta is a good investment and try to make a THETA price prediction, you need to do your own research on the project.
All the data for research is available on the project page on our website: check out the technical features of the project in this review, try to use the app, see if the information about the team is available and the team is open for communication, and using the project dashboard and the THETA price charts, assess the project usage rates as well as the tokens price movement and the number of their holders.
Is Theta safe
Theta’s ongoing development is overseen by Theta Labs, a San Francisco-based company that is the subsidiary of Sliver.tv, a popular esports entertainment platform.
The Theta team was gathered by its current CEO Mitch Liu and Jieyi Long who is currently involved as the CTO of the project.
Theta Labs lists Samsung, Sierra Ventures, Gumi, and Sony Innovation Fund among other investors. Some notable individuals from the global video streaming industry are involved with Theta blockchain as advisors including Youtube co-founder Steve Chen, product director of Rakuten Viki Jonathan Wong, and Twitch co-founder Justin Kan.
Partners
As of October 2021, there are a number of respectable digital companies running Enterprise Validator Nodes on Theta including Google, Blockchain Ventures, Samsung, Sony Europe, Binance, Gumi, and Theta Labs itself.
Theta is in the process of building up its ecosystem. One of the first dApps on Theta became its native streaming service ThetaTV, where users could earn TFUEL while watching streams. Some popular video platforms already integrated with Theta are CONtv Anime, World Poker Tour, Cinedigm, GameTalkTalk, MovieBloc, GFUEL, and others.
The latest ecosystem achievement, Theta Drop is an NFT marketplace powered by the usage of a new TDROP token.
What's next
The current Theta roadmap, available on the project’s website, includes the development of Elite Edge Node encoding for Video on Demand, NFT-based digital rights management, and TDROP decentralized governance launch for Q2 2022.
During Q3 2022, the Theta team will focus on developing an EdgeStore Alpha gateway, Theta Video API Advanced Analytics, and Theta Video API live streaming support. In Q4 2022, there will be an EdgeStore Beta release, a Testnet target launch of the Theta Metachain, and a Mainnet 4.0 target release of Metachain SDK.
The further plans of the Theta team include EdgeStore production release, Decentralized Theta Video API for encoding, storage, and relaying, and Edge Streaming, Storage, and Compute new use cases.
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Last updated: Jun 25, 2022
