A new age of digital content streaming is upon us, and Theta is leading the way
YouTube has fundamentally changed the way we use the internet. With its content platform and streaming services it has become one of the most popular websites in the world. There are a number of other streaming platforms available, but they’re all plagued by many of the same issues. The THETA project aims to fix these issues, and both THETA token and TFuel token stand grow substantially as the THETA project takes hold.
For a content creator, the path to publishing content has many tiers. The creator must upload it to a video platform which houses a centralized Content Delivery Network (CDN) (like YouTube’s website). This also applies to Twitch, Netflix, Tik Tok, and other content generation and streaming platforms.
Once the creator’s content is published they no longer have control over how it is presented or consumed, and limitations on the CDN will impact the consumer’s experience with the creator’s content. The CDN is connected to by all the viewers watching the content, and as such, the CDN has to service all of the concurrent datastreams at once. With data demands increasing more and more (4k, 8k, etc.), even with high speed internet available, video streaming suffers mightily from poor quality and buffering issues. High load times further impact performance since the CDN has finite resources – think about how little you enjoy buffering and network issues while watching NetFlix. The centralized nature of these CDNs means less revenue flows back to content creators and platforms.
Theta’s concept stands to completely overhaul the way we publish and consume video content. By creating a de-centralized peer-to-peer video delivery system, viewers can earn rewards as well as publishers. Theta allows users to simultaneously watch video content and rewards them for sharing excess bandwidth and computing resources to other users on the network. This resource sharing guarantees a better quality deliver service and creates a vibrant ecosystem at the same time. Participating in the network is a new and novel way to be paid by simply using the platform and participating, and the efficiency of this system is impressive and robust.
Theta’s concept involves a hybrid delivery architecture that is powered by Theta Fuel (TFuel) tokens.
In a traditional CDN, all the viewers directly connect to POP servers. For users geographically far away from the POP servers and during times of heavy traffic, the stream quality is likely to be lower. In Theta’s model, their hybrid approach allows viewers to pull streams from caching nodes (users “donating” unused bandwidth) that are geographically closer, results in a higher stream quality.
So, this is Theta’s main idea, but the beauty behind the project (remember – we invest in tokens, not projects. Some tokens have bad projects and are lucrative, and some great projects have bad tokens that are not lucrative, etc.) that we love it the incentivized micropayment pool. Theta’s blockchain technology itself is robust – 500+ transactions per second, proof of stake, etc., but the real money is in this micropayments network.
Specifically, we’re interested in the Theta’s TFUEL token, which mechanizes the entire ecosystem. TFUEL is the main tool used in interactions within Theta’s realm.
Video platforms (third party providers) buy TFUEL and distribute it to viewers. Streamers (producers of content) receive TFUEL for their work (through donations by viewers, etc. – like Twitch). Viewers earn TFUEL by consuming video content through advertising/engagement, or through activities with video content. Caching nodes (or the relayers) enable other viewers to use their spare bandwidth and are rewarded in TFUEL. Theta tokens are used by advertisers to buy space or sponsorships on the platform.
The one downside is that for now, TFUEL is inflationary. 100% of the Theta Tokens have been released, but TFuel token quantities are subject to 5% inflation. Despite this, the business model for Theta is really sound and TFuel has a major use case. As time goes on I expect Theta Token and TFuel to continue to grow well within the market. If I had to choose one or the other, I would add TFuel to my portfolio, which I have recently done!
