Dunamu, the firm that operates the Upbit exchange, hosted its blockchain conference UDC 2021 from Sept. 1 to 2.
Watch the first day of speakers here and the second day here.
Wes Levitt, head of strategy for Theta Labs, spoke during the first day.
Theta Labs is a decentralized peer-to-peer video delivery network.
It allows users to deliver videos to one another on a decentralized space. Every time a delivery is successful, the sender receives rewards in the network's THETA token.
"Theta is not a competitor to platforms like Netflix or YouTube," Levitt said.
"We simply provide a new type of infrastructure. Theta is open-sourced and is easily compatible with other protocols and platforms."
He likened Theta to the shared economy. Just as you can monetize unused property via Airbnb, Theta allows users to monetize unused bandwidth or hard drive space.
Levitt also touted the Theta network as a place where you can "create NFTs cheaper and quicker than on the Ethereum network."
Theta introduced its NFT service this past May.
"If the Ethereum network is overcrowded, its costs around 50 dollars to make a single NFT. On Theta, you can make one for a dollar or less," Levitt said.
Levitt also spoke about ways to connect Theta's videos to NFTs. He thinks that linking video content to NFTs will help content creators interact with their viewers.
"For instance, let's say that a content creator releases a video, and then a viewer decides to make an NFT for that video," he said. The creative process becomes interactive and two-way, instead of one-way.
To provide a real-life example of Theta's impact on the ecosystem, he pointed to a collaboration with NASA. NASA used Theta to livestream a video of the Perserverance Rover landing on Mars.
Theta created an NFT emoji to commemorate the event, but user needed to verify that they watched the video on the network to able to download the emoji.
"NFTs are blockchain-based, so anyone who watched the video on the network was automatically verified by the protocol," Levitt explained.
UDC 2021 articles are sponsored by Upbit.