Theta

What is Theta Network

Theta Network is the next generation media and entertainment focused blockchain. Theta infrastructure enables existing video and media platforms to drive incremental revenues and reduce content delivery CDN costs while rewards end-users for sharing their storage and/or bandwidth on any PC, mobile, Smart TV or IoT device. Theta supports Turing complete smart contracts, and is fully compatible with Ethereum. This enables a wide range of interesting Web3 applications to be built on the Theta Network. Examples include non-fungible tokens (NFT), decentralized exchanges (DEX/DeFi), and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), which could become indispensable building blocks of the next generation media and entertainment platforms.

Theta’s enterprise validator and governance council is led by global leaders including Google, Samsung, Sony, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), Binance, Blockchain Ventures, DHVC and gumi. Theta leverages its user base of millions of viewers on the Theta Network to seed its peer-to-peer video network along with premium content partnerships with Lionsgate, MGM Studios, NASA, and others. Popular video platforms integrated with Theta infrastructure include CONtv Anime, Party Poker, World Poker Tour, Cinedigm, Samsung VR, GameTalkTalk, MovieBloc, Ultra, GFUEL and other OTT media, entertainment, and live streaming services. Strategic corporate investors include Samsung NEXT, Sony Innovation Fund, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI), Creative Artists Agency (CAA), and Silicon Valley VCs including DCM and Sierra Ventures.

Theta Network is a "dual network" consisting of two complementary subsystems, the Theta Blockchain and the Theta Edge Network. The Theta blockchain provides payment, reward, and smart contract capabilities, while the edge network is responsible for the storage and delivery of media assets like images and videos. Below we provide more details for the two components.

What Theta Network is NOT

Theta Network is NOT a decentralized Youtube or a decentralized Twitch. Rather, Theta is the underlying blockchain and decentralized storage/delivery infrastructure that powers the next generation Web3 video streaming and media entertainment platforms.

Theta Blockchain

The Theta Blockchain is a purposely-built blockchain designed from the ground up targeting the media and entertainment industry. Theta’s unique multi-level BFT consensus design combines a committee of 20–30 Enterprise Validator Nodes with a second layer of 1000s of community-run Guardian Nodes. Validator Nodes propose and finalize new blocks in the chain, while Guardian Nodes seal blocks and act as a check on malicious or otherwise non-functional Validator Nodes. While the validators alone already provide security on par with most other POS chains (e.g. BSC, Solana, Polygon, etc), the guardians in the thousands offer another layer of security guarantee.

A similar strategy is adopted by the Gasper consensus protocol governing the ETH2.0 beacon chain. As of February 2022, Enterprise Validator Nodes on Theta are run by Google, Blockchain Ventures, Samsung, Sony Europe, Binance, gumi Cryptos, Creative Artists Agency, and Theta Labs, with more major enterprises in the process of joining. After the Theta 2.0 launch in May 2020, Guardian Node counts quickly ramped up. Currently, there are more than 3,500 Guardian nodes run by the Theta community members. With this uniquely designed consensus mechanism, the Theta Blockchain is highly decentralized, while being able to process 1,000 transactions per second, with virtually zero carbon footprint.

Summary

As applications and businesses transition into Web3, they will require customizable, high-performance blockchains to enable new business models and tools for value creation. Theta Metachain will be created to meet the needs of video platforms, ticketing companies, metaverses, and many other enterprises as they evolve to decentralized models that put value capture and data ownership back in the hands of users. By transitioning to the Metachain model enabling potentially unlimited transactional throughput and subsecond block finalization, Theta will be ready to meet the needs of applications with millions of users and transactions per day. Each platform or Web3 business can have their own subchain that is highly customizable and comes with the transparency, security, and credibility of a public blockchain. Media and entertainment companies can implement their own dedicated subchains with all the Web3 tools they require for video, compute and storage via Theta Video API, EdgeStore, and NFT-based DRM.

Polygon (MATIC) Contract Address:

0xB46E0ae620EFd98516f49bb00263317096C114b2