What is Theta Network?

What is Theta? Well, Theta is a blockchain with a very useful vision; they want to improve the quality of videos anywhere in the world. Maybe you can always watch videos in the best quality available, but not everybody can. Some parts in the world lack of a strong internet connection. Here you can read how Theta is doing it.

Today‘s live video streaming is of poor quality according to the developers of Theta. Especially in undeveloped countries. This is because of the Content Delivery Networks (CDN) lack reach, which causes video re-buffering and high load times in some parts of the world. Almost every video that is shared today is available in 4K. Viewers demand the best, and want to see those videos in 4K, 8K or even better quality, like VR. Normally a video creator posts his video on a platform like YouTube. When someone wants to see the video, he will need to make a connection with the server of YouTube to render the video. This can be a problem and take a lot of time when the CDN lacks reach in that part of the world. The problem is actually that the video is only available from 1 server. A centralized server. Developers of Theta wanted to fix this problem by making videos not only available from one centralized server, but by offering them in a decentralized network. Theta is creating a peer-to-peer network (P2P) as it is running on a blockchain. People who participate in Theta, offer their unused bandwidth for video caching and relay-nodes. This will improve the quality of the video and makes them smoother to watch. By this way, even people in undeveloped countries with a CDN that lacks reach can watch videos in 4K, 8K and VR. Theta is, as said, using a P2P network to improve the performance and quality of videos. This can be done because the network of Theta consists of different users with different types of hardware. So, there is a lot of variety, which makes the network always work. The hardware of users (so called nodes) in the network can also be used as caching nodes. This makes it possible to relay the streaming to viewers that are geographically closer to the nodes that is storing the video the viewers want to see. The users of the network can also pull the video stream from other nodes instead of relying on content delivery networks. In the end, Theta wants to reduce the costs of CDNs by 80%. This is based on the lack of need to maintain expensive data centers that are built anywhere in the world. These datacenters take a lot of space and costs a lot of money, that won‘t be needed anymore after Theta succeeds.

Why would somebody share his unused memory and bandwidth with others so they can view videos? That‘s a question the developers of Theta also asked to themselves. They wanted to stimulate people to share their memory and band-with for the Theta network by creating a Theta cryptocurrency named Theta Fuel (also known as TFuel). Participations get Theta Fuel when they participate in the network. Theta started as an ICO. There is a total supply of 5 billion Theta Fuel coins, and Theta has a marketing cap of $48.146.889 in October 2020. The trading of Theta is particularly popular in Korea but can be traded anywhere in the world.

Most cryptocurrency exchanges, like Coinmerce offer Theta Fuel. You can buy and sell Theta on this platform. It can be stored in a hot wallet or cold wallet, as long as it supports the ERC-20 standard, because Theta is built on this standard.

It is possible to join the network of Theta and work together with other users to improve video quality all over the world. You can do this by downloading the latest tools on the website of Theta; and earn TFuel by letting Theta cache videos on your piece of hardware.

Theta is founded by Mitch Liu and Jieyi Long. They are both also cofounder of THETA.tv. Mitch Liu is besides Theta, also cofounder of Gameview Studios and Tapjoy. Jieyi has an PhD in Computer Engineering and developed multiple patented technologies including VR live streaming as well as instant replays for video games. This also gave him the vision to give every person in the world the ability to watch videos in the best quality. The blockchain team of Theta exists of 15 people that help developing the platform as best as possible.