Theta Token Goes Parabolic as New Upgrade Nears

Theta token (THETA), the native token on the Theta distributed video streaming platform, has seen massive price gains in recent weeks, with investors anticipating a major network upgrade in the near future as the most likely driver of the rally.

As of press time on Tuesday (11:21 UTC), THETA, ranked 28th by market capitalization, was up by 25% over the past 24 hours, and 132% over the past 7 days. The price increased by 300% in a month and 253% in year. The strong gains made THETA and its related theta fuel (TFUEL) token the second-best and best performer, respectively, for the week among the top 100 cryptoassets by market capitalization, data from Coinpaprika showed.

THETA’s impressive gains over the past few days essentially leaves bitcoin (BTC) in the dust behind it, with the number one digital asset seeing rise of 1.5% over the past 24 hours, and a decline of more than 10% in the past 7 days.

Although it is always questionable how sustainable a parabolic rally like the one we see in THETA now is, there are some possible factors that can help explain the surge.

Among these, is the upcoming launch of their “mainnet 2.0,” which is said to represent a major step forward for the security, functioning, and decentralization of the blockchain platform.

According to a blog post from the Theta team, “community-run Guardian Nodes” will, after the upgrade, take a direct role in block production, while also making up a “second layer of defense” for the network. As a result, “no single group or entity will control the majority of THETA staked,” the team said, while adding that this represents a “significant milestone toward Theta’s decentralization.”

Theta’s Mainnet 2.0 is expected to launch on Wednesday May 27.

The latest price gains for THETA also comes after it was reported that the video streaming service might be featured as one of the content providers available in the Samsung Daily platform, pre-installed on every Galaxy S20 smartphone shipped in the US.

As of press time on Tuesday, however, the original announcement of the new partnership between Theta and Samsung has been deleted by the team. Asked about the matter in a Telegram chat today, Theta Labs’ Head of Strategy, Wes Levitt, said that they did so to avoid “jumping the gun on an official Samsung Daily announcement of new partners,” and that they would instead “wait until THETA.tv is released in the app.”