2021 May 20 (Thur) 19:00(KST), A summary of the THETA AMA held in the Hanbitco Official Telegram Room will be provided.
Q1. For today’s AMA, we have invited Theta Labs Head of Strategy, Wes Levitt! Before the AMA, could you please provide a brief introduction?
Hi everyone, it’s Wes from Theta Labs. Happy to be here for Korea NFT Month.
At Theta Labs, my title is Head of Strategy, and I focus on our business strategy, marketing and community relations with the Theta community. The two main functions of what we built : Theta Network, which is a decentralised video delivery network built on the Theta Blockchain, and THETA.tv, which is our first party video site built on top of the Theta Network.
Q2. (Pre-Question) What is Theta’s ultimate goal?
Theta’s ultimate goal is for any device, whether a phone or computer or any connected device, can be used by Theta Network to more efficiently process video and other data. Whether that is my relaying data video streams or file patches or OS updates, or using processing power for computations, the core goal is for these tasks to be done more efficiently and at less cost by leveraging under-utilized connected devices.
Q3. (Pre-Question) How do you predict the NFT market’s direction and what is Theta’s ultimate goal?
We continue to see very strong demand from content creators and brands to use NFTs to monetize their IP and keep fans engaged. I think it only continues as NFTs become more mainstream, and NFTs markets become more liquid and therefore higher value + better user experience. The end of the COVID pandemic will also lead to a boom in NFTs representing tickets for live events, easily transferred user to user but impossible to counterfeit due to the provable authenticity on chain.
Q4. (Pre-Question) What was the idea that motivated you to create THETA. What is THETA focusing on Now?
The original motivation for Theta project was to solve our own problem of high CDN costs, by creating a decentralized way to delivery video streams that all users could benefit in as well. Beyond that core mission, we’ve expanded to allow Theta Edge Node users to contribute not only their bandwidth, but also their compute resources to the decentralized Theta Edge Network. We have also made great strides in NFTs as a response to video creator demand, and think the video form is perfect fit for NFTs. For example, streaming WPT tournaments live which Theta users can relay, and then NFTs of winning hands being released in real-time on Theta blockchain is a vision that shows how Theta can improve on the viewing experience in multiple ways.
Q5. (Live-Question) I understand that Theta’s mainnet 3.0 is being prepared. What is the focus on the upgrade?
The main focus for Mainnet 3.0 is expand Theta Edge Nodes with the release of ‘Elite Edge Nodes’, which allow users to stake TFUEL to their node and earn more for having strong uptime. The goal of this is to expand from 30k Edge Nodes to 100k and beyond, and make the network as a whole stronger and more reliable. This has the effect of further Theta adoption because as enterprise video platforms evaluate Theta Network, they see a more reliable network with more coverage around the world.
Q6. (Live-Question) Blockchain platform gain trust in the value of tokens depending on how the token mechanism is designed. Theta has two tokens, Theta token and Theta Fuel. What role does each token play in the ecosystem and how does it interact with each other?
THETA is the staking token of the Theta ecosystem, while Theta Fuel (TFUEL) is used for transactions such as paying video relayers, gas for transfers and smart contract interactions, and service payments. Stakers earn TFUEL for staking their THETA tokens. The reason for a 2 token system is so that transactions in TFUEL are made in a very liquid currency, vs. THETA which will be less liquid inherently because 60% of it is staked and that could be even more in the future. Combining the two makes for more complicated economics of the token’s usage.
Q7. (Live-Question) Yesterday Bitcoin made a huge drop. THETA also couldn’t avoid a major decline. What do you think of the future of the blockchain project, which is greatly affected by the price of Bitcoin?
Volatility is in the nature of cryptocurrency, and so that doesn’t worry us as far as Theta development goes. I expect that to decline in the future when more enterprise adoption comes to crypto (it’s in early stages and lots if pilots, but it is nowhere near mainstream in business). Since Theta Labs is more than well-funded for years to come, we have no concerns about that in the short term.
Q8. We will now wrap up our AMA with THETA. Thank you to THETA and Hanbitco Users, Wes, and the THETA Team for participating in the THETA AMA. Lastly, we will finalize the AMA with last remarks from Wes!
Thanks to everyone who joined and for submitting your questions today! I hope you will join Theta project as well and start running your own Theta nodes, and makes sure to check out the ThetaDrop with World Poker Tour too! You can find all the links for more info and where to follow us on social here: https://thetadrop.com/
Github: https://github.com/thetatoken
Documentation: https://docs.thetatoken.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Theta_Network
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/QfMpeZBfKB (server name: Theta Network)
Medium: https://medium.com/theta-network
