What is Theta Network?

Theta is a blockchain created by Theta Labs as a video delivery network looking to build off the success of platforms like Twitch in a much more decentralized manner. Users can watch videos or streams and offer unused bandwidth to relay the content to other viewers and in turn, earn rewards in the form of TFUEL. The project is already very well fleshed out and has a lot of exciting things in the works for the network, so here I’ll go into some of the things they are doing and planning to bring to the table.

There are two tokens on the network. Theta Token (THETA) is the governance token on the network and is used to create the nodes that run the network. TFuel (TFUEL) is the other token available, this one is more operational and is used to pay fees and reward users for sharing their extra bandwidth.

The blockchain itself utilizes three different kinds of nodes; Enterprise Validator nodes, Guardian nodes, and Edge nodes and we’ll take a look at each one below and a lot of this is detailed more in the 2.0 whitepaper.

There are about 20 Enterprise Validator nodes that propose and produce new blocks in the chain. Some of these nodes are run by some pretty big names including Google, Sony, and Samsung. With the ideal amount of validator nodes, they are able to produce blocks at a very fast speed while maintaining sufficient difficulty to prevent malicious activity on the chain.

Although the speed of the validator nodes is something to be proud of, it slows down a little bit when it reaches the Guardian nodes. Guardian nodes are community-run, so the number of them reaches over a thousand at a given time. These nodes act to finalize the chains produced by the validators and they reach this consensus by more than two-thirds of the guardian nodes see the same chains. Guardian nodes can be run by any member of the community assuming they are able to meet the minimum system requirements and stake a minimum of 1000 THETA, currently a little over $8k. TFuel is paid out to stakers as a reward based on their stake amounts.

These are the two nodes that currently comprise the existing mainnet. But the project is now eyeing a mainnet 3.0 release in 94 days (delayed from mid May) which will introduce more fleshed-out Edge nodes. These act as nodes users can run to add to the network’s capability of relaying streams (with unused bandwidth, similar to watching) over the network. Currently, users can test out this functionality ahead of the official launch and eventually earn some extra TFuel from it. Any user can run an Edge node, but those staking TFuel will upgrade to an Elite Edge node and earn more tokens based on their stake amount.

There is a lot more nuance to the project and more detailed information can be found in the whitepapers and research content here.

THETA itself is currently making some big moves in the market. It reached a new ATH of $14.87 just a few days ago but has since dropped down to $12.68 following the announcement of the mainnet delay. Currently, though, it’s at a 51.5% rise in the last seven days, and 85.3% in fourteen which puts it comfortably at #9 in market cap.

Having spent some time on the website, the network seems to be running pretty well so far. I ran into a few hiccups on the actual streaming service in that I wasn’t always earning tokens when relaying video, which is slightly worrying but everything else was smooth sailing. However, I think the project itself is looking incredibly promising and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t excited at the prospect of an alternative to Twitch or Youtube. It’s worth it to at least take a glance at the website and service because I think the project will continue to grow even more as time goes on.