CryptoSlate not too long ago had the chance to speak with Theta’s Head of Technique, Wes Levitt. Theta is making a extra environment friendly, decentralized community for delivering video and different knowledge between related gadgets.
Wes Levitt is Head of Technique for Theta Labs, the place he works on company technique, advertising and press relations, and analytics. He has been a speaker on blockchain matters at conferences just like the New York Media Competition, Blockchain Join, and NAB Streaming Summit amongst others. Previous to becoming a member of Theta Labs, Wes spent 8 years in funding roles in actual property fairness and securitized debt. He holds a BS in Economics from the College of Oregon and an MBA from UC-Berkeley Haas Faculty of Enterprise.
What’s the skilled background of the Theta founders and what’s their earlier expertise in crypto?
Theta CEO Mitch Liu has an in depth background in media and gaming. He co-founded Gameview Studios finest recognized for its Faucet Fish cell recreation franchise with almost 100 Million downloads. The corporate was acquired by DeNA, a number one Japanese cell gaming firm inside 6 months of launch. Previous to that, he co-founded Tapjoy in 2007, a pioneer of rewarded social and cell video promoting, and grew that firm to $100MM in revenues.
He obtained a BS in Pc Science & Engineering from MIT, accomplished his thesis analysis at MIT Media Lab “Interactive Cinema” video group and obtained an MBA from Stanford Graduate Faculty of Enterprise.
CTO Jieyi Lengthy leads the Theta Labs technical crew and developed a number of U.S. patented applied sciences associated to decentralized knowledge streaming and stay VR streaming. Previous to Theta Labs he served in senior technical roles at MadSkill Sport Studios, Synopsys, and Magma Design Automation. He obtained a B.S. diploma in Microelectronics from Peking College in Beijing, China. He additionally obtained a Ph.D. diploma in Pc Engineering from Northwestern College in Evanston, IL the place he performed analysis in mathematical modeling and algorithms to optimize distributed electronics techniques.
What issues is Theta fixing?
Theta is making a extra environment friendly, decentralized community for delivering video and different knowledge between related gadgets, which reduces the price of supply for video platforms and improves their backside line. The introduction of token rewards for finish customers additionally drives increased consumer engagement, longer watch instances, and extra recurring visits which all result in increased market share.
How many individuals are engaged on Theta and the place is the crew situated?
There are at the moment 25 individuals at Theta Labs, primarily in San Jose / Bay Space, in addition to satellite tv for pc workplaces in Seoul and Amsterdam.
Apart from digital collectibles, what’s Theta’s long-term outlook for NFTs? What further use circumstances will emerge that haven’t been carried out but?
We see an enormous alternative within the connection of NFTs with real-world objects and occasions. A number of the crypto streamers releasing NFTs on Theta already are tying their NFTs to one-of-a-kind experiences and offline objects which might be introduced shortly.
Additionally, with the easing of Covid restrictions, we’re very excited in regards to the return of stay occasions, and the way NFTs can be utilized for ticketing – an enormous enchancment as a result of NFT linked tickets are simply transferrable, but are provably genuine and scarce.
What’s the strategic benefit of partnering with Sony Europe?
Sony Innovation Fund was an early investor in Theta Labs, so we have now been discussing potential collaborations for a while now. As Sony Europe’s R&D Lab began specializing in blockchain expertise, it made sense to work collectively to bolster the safety and consensus of Theta blockchain with the launch of their Theta Validator Node.
What does the Lionsgate and Cinedigm partnership imply for the way forward for Theta?
It’s vital that main manufacturers and enterprises get expertise within the blockchain house, and these partnerships are sometimes the primary steps for them to try this. As Theta onboards extra of those key companions, the protocol is growing a status because the blockchain that’s purpose-built for media and leisure and could be the precise first step into the blockchain house for an organization.
What are a number of the technological benefits of the Theta blockchain? Is it constructing upon any present blockchain frameworks?
Theta is primarily new code constructed from the bottom up, although it does incorporate some design components from the Tendermint consensus. Constructing on that base, Theta’s multi-BFT consensus mannequin balances a big group of three,500+ community-run Guardian Nodes with a core group of Enterprise Validator Nodes, run by teams like Google Cloud, Sony Europe, Samsung Subsequent, and Blockchain Ventures. This enables quick consensus among the many validator set, however with out sacrificing decentralization as transactions are finalized among the many bigger permissionless Guardian Node set.
Theta has additionally made nice strides in ultra-high-throughput blockchain micropayments to facilitate decentralized networks, for which it has been awarded a number of U.S patents.
What are the challenges of constructing a purpose-built blockchain? How will Theta obtain decentralization of its utilization and governance?
One problem is compatibility with different blockchains. Launching a brand new ERC20 token is comparatively straightforward for the reason that infrastructure is already totally in place for Ethereum-based tokens; for Theta, we needed to construct a lot of it out ourselves. That has taken time however is now largely full, and was aided by the truth that Theta makes use of related cryptography and is EVM-compatible, which for instance means any Ethereum good contract can run on Theta blockchain with none code changes.
What are you able to inform us in regards to the Theta product roadmap? What might be a very powerful upgrades of the Theta mainnet 3 improve?
The largest change for Mainnet 3.0 is the introduction of Elite Edge Nodes, a stronger, extra strong community of nodes to ship decentralized video streams. These nodes will enable customers to stake TFUEL tokens and earn further TFUEL as a reward for having excessive uptime and community availability. This extra incentive is meant to drive bigger numbers of always-on Edge Nodes that can make the Theta Community simpler for video supply.
What’s the utility of the Theta token?
Theta Token (THETA) is the governance token of the Theta protocol. THETA is used to stake as a Validator or Guardian node, contributing to dam manufacturing and the protocol governance of the Theta Community. By staking and operating a node, customers will earn a proportional quantity of the brand new TFUEL generated. The availability of THETA is fastened at 1 billion and can by no means enhance.
Theta Gas (TFUEL) is the operational token of the Theta protocol. TFUEL is used for on-chain operations like funds to Edge Node relayers for sharing a video stream, or for deploying or interacting with good contracts. Relayers earn TFUEL for each video stream they relay to different customers on the community. You may consider Theta Gas because the “gasoline” of the protocol. There have been 5 billion TFUEL at genesis of Theta blockchain, and the provision will increase yearly at a set proportion set on the protocol degree.
The place do you see the Theta ecosystem over the subsequent few years? What would be the main milestones?
Within the subsequent few years, we see Theta evolving to function a decentralized supply community for any knowledge sort. We expect there are a whole lot of alternatives in relaying of recreation patches, OS updates, and different file varieties the place there are the precise community traits for peer-to-peer networks like Theta. You could have many concurrent customers downloading these recordsdata concurrently, generally tens of millions at a time, which is good to create excessive peer availability for p2p networks.
What’s one of the simplest ways for these to study extra about Theta?
One of the simplest ways is to start out with our Theta Documentation and GitHub, and to comply with us on social channels right here:
Join with Wes Levitt
Like what you see? Subscribe for updates.
