Theta awarded 3rd U.S. Patent 10,979,467 for “Methods and Systems for Peer Discovery in a Decentralized Data Streaming and Delivery Network"
We’re pleased to announce that today Theta Labs was awarded a third U.S. Patent 10,979,467 for “Methods and Systems for Peer Discovery in a Decentralized Data Streaming and Delivery Network”. This groundbreaking innovation extends Theta’s previous U.S. patent 10,771,524 by introducing Viewer Nodes that leverage a superior Peer Discovery system to optimize decentralized video delivery. You can read the full patent here.
The patented Peer Discovery technology uses advanced algorithms to enhance the robustness and connectivity of the Theta peer-to-peer edge network, resulting in significantly improved video delivery quality. To achieve optimal node peering in a decentralized network, it takes a complex set of decision rules and machine learning to continually match peers that will best deliver video segments in real-time. Simply matching the two closest users is not enough — peers must be evaluated for their ISP/network operator, network condition, connectivity, available bandwidth, and more. Theta’s peer-to-peer logic looks at all of these factors and establishes a reputation score that determines the optimal peer each time they are available for relaying in as little as 2–5 second windows. For example, if you’re a Verizon user watching a livestream on a Theta-enabled network in San Francisco, you may not match with your next door neighbor with an unreliable AT&T connection — instead, the optimal peer could be a user 800 miles north in Seattle who also has a fast Verizon connection.
At a technical level, Theta Peer Discovery works by a node sending a peer list request to a smart tracker server for accessing one or more fragments of a requested data file, including a requested video file, its network location, and the geolocation of the viewer peer node. The node receives back a list of suitable peer nodes currently active in the network, ranked in order of their calculated network reputation score. The Theta tracker server continually evaluates how successful the recommended nodes were in delivering video segments, and uses machine learning to improve future reputation scoring based on this data.
Theta’s portfolio of patents work hand-in-hand with our blockchain and all its related components which are fully open-source. Theta GitHub contains open-source repositories for the underlying Theta Ledger, the Theta Explorer, and the Theta Wallet for any user to build upon. In addition, our dedicated Theta community has supported our growth to over 30,000 Edge Nodes, 4,500 Guardian Nodes, and we’re quickly becoming fully decentralized with nearly 60% of the THETA token supply staked to ensure governance and security of our native chain. Our technology patents are an integral part of our business strategy to protect our innovative, groundbreaking technology, optimizing for streaming and data delivery, and are strategic to our long-term partnerships with Samsung, Google, Sony, MGM, Lionsgate, NASA, WPT and others.
