Co-Founders of Twitch and YouTube Advise Theta Token Presale That Sells Out in 48 Hours
SLIVER.tv, the next-generation esports entertainment platform, announced the close of a $20 million (USD) Theta token private sale to marquee blockchain and esports experts including DHVC, I Blockchain Capital, Nirvana Capital, aelf, Synapse Capital and leading Silicon Valley VCs DCM, Sierra Ventures and the Venture Reality Fund. Led by Danhua Capital and advised by Steve Chen, Co-founder of YouTube and Justin Kan, Co-founder of Twitch, the private token presale had overwhelming interest and was 3x oversubscribed selling out in 48 hours.
The company is also announcing that the Theta ERC20-compliant tokens launched in December 2017 on SLIVER.tv platform, attracting over four million visits in January from esports viewers around the world. Theta tokens are earned by fans for daily login on the platform, used as gifts for their favorite influencers, and soon, to buy virtual goods for their favorite games. Since launch, over one million Theta tokens have been earned and gifted to two dozen top esports streamers by over 980,000 SLIVER.tv users. In the future, tokens can also be utilized by advertisers and brand sponsors to fund ad campaigns and support key content creators.
Theta tokens by Theta Labs, Inc., a subsidiary of SLIVER.tv, aims to solve today’s pain points of video content streaming and delivery through a decentralized, user-powered mesh network. Theta’s native blockchain and protocol is estimated to launch in late 2018 to provide higher quality streaming by increasing global reach in developing countries, lowering costs for content delivery for publishers and broadcasters, and helping content creators capture more of their advertising revenue. Users who share their bandwidth and resources to relay and re-broadcast video streams will be rewarded by mining Theta tokens.
“We’ve been impressed working with Mitch and the entire SLIVER.tv team since we led the company’s Series A round of financing. It’s clear they’re on an exponential growth trajectory and getting huge traction in the esports streaming community, their underlying video delivery technology under development makes all this possible,” said Dovey Wan, Managing Director of Danhua Capital. “We’ve been in the crypto space since 2013 and are among the earliest supporters of DFINITY, Brave and Orchid Labs. Content delivery networks by nature can leverage decentralization and blockchain technology very well. Today’s blockchain technology is like the internet in 1996, I think Theta has the opportunity to become the dominant decentralized network that powers all video streaming for the next 20 years.”
“Our vision is to create the next generation esports and video streaming ecosystem by democratizing today’s centralized content delivery networks,” said Mitch Liu, Co-Founder and CEO of SLIVER.tv and Theta Labs. “We’re thrilled to have the support of so many blockchain and esports experts, we truly believe blockchain technology will disrupt esports and the broader video and media industries. Video content accounts for nearly 80% of all internet data, it’s a huge problem and a multi-billion dollar opportunity that Theta is looking to democratize.”
Theta Labs advisors include Steve Chen, Co-Founder of YouTube, Justin Kan, Co-Founder of Twitch, Fan Zhang, founding member of Sequoia Capital China, Rajeev Surati, MIT Phd in video compression and streaming, Cliff Morgan, CEO of GFUEL, Sam Wick, Head of UTA Ventures, and Dennis Fong, CEO of Plays.tv aka “Thresh” the world champion of Quake/Doom.
About SLIVER.tv / Theta Labs
Theta Labs, Inc. is a Delaware C-corp wholly owned subsidiary of SLIVER.tv, a leading esports live streaming platform with over four million monthly user visits. SLIVER.tv is backed by $17M in venture financing from top-tier Silicon Valley VCs including Danhua Capital, DCM, Sierra Ventures, Venture Reality Fund, leading Hollywood/media investors including Creative Artists Agency, BDMI, Greycroft GC Tracker, Advancit Capital and top Japanese mobile gaming firms including GREE and Colopl. Additionally, the company holds four patents, the most recent addressing the problem of generating highly efficient spherical videos for 360° streaming.
