Theta, a blockchain that facilitates decentralized video streaming, recently updated its mainnet, adding a number of benefits. Theta’s mainnet now hosts smart contract capabilities, as of a block height of 8,411,427, Theta Labs said in a blog post on Thursday. (At the time of publication, Theta’s blockchain showed a height of 8,411,845, so the updates should already be live.) Theta is one project still chugging along from the initial coin offering boom. The project finished its private sale to accredited investors from outside of the United States near the end of the bubble in January 2018, raising $20 million. Although …

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is funding a major decentralized audio streaming service through its investment and incubation arm. According to an Oct. 23 announcement, Binance Labs led a $1.25 million extension round for Audius, a blockchain-enabled streaming service that connects music fans with artists. The latest investment round follows a $3.1 million round co-led by Multicoin Capital and Blockchange Ventures in July 2020. Major industry players like Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures also participated in the round, as previously announced. According to Audius Co-founder and CEO Roneil Rumburg, the latest rounds brings the platform's total investment up to …

Blockchain-powered gaming platform Ultra announced Sep. 3 that it will integrate Theta Network’s live streaming technology as part of its user experience. The service will allow users to see games in action before making a purchase, and earn rewards that can be spent within the ecosystem. Ultra is a game distribution platform using blockchain technology to bring new features to both players and developers. With a planned release in Q4 2020 it aims to disrupt the $160 billion gaming market by enabling gamers to play, discover, compete and socialize with zero friction. When a user hits a particular game’s landing …

What are you doing Friday afternoon? Cointelegraph is hosting the latest edition of its Cointelegraph Talks series this Friday, August 28, at 3 PM Eastern / 12 PM Pacific on our YouTube channel. We’ll have three entrepreneurs active at the intersection of music and crypto joining us to discuss blockchain’s implications for the music business. Daniel Dewar is founder of media fintech company Paperchain. Jesse Grushack is co-founder of Ujo Music, an Ethereum-based platform for connecting artists with their fans. And Roneil Rumburg co-founded Audius as an artist-centric music streaming platform. All three will be on hand to present their …

The Ethereum-based social media app, Pepo, has integrated with video conferencing platform, Zoom, to facilitate live streaming. Pepo Live Events is currently exclusively available in beta on the platform’s website and has not given an estimate for when it plans to enable mobile functionality. Pepo integrates Zoom for live streaming Only Pepo community admins are able to stream live, however, anyone can participate in the live events. All events streamed on the platform are recorded, and are limited to a time limit of three hours. Pepo's decision to integrate Zoom suggests an increase in demand for live streaming services amid …

A Czech farm has set up a 24-hour live stream where viewers can instantly convert their crypto change into sheep food. Upon payment, alfalfa pellets are dispensed directly into the flock’s feeding tray, allowing viewers to watch the delighted lambs gobble down their treats in real-time. Tanglesheep’s Shed streams 24 hours a day on YouTube and Twitch, however, feeding hours are strictly between 8:00 and 20:00 CET. The stream features three different angles of the sheep enclosure, in addition to headshots of the eight adopted sheep that star in the show. Crypto donations used to fund animal rescue The Tanglesheep’s …

Ditto Music will launch Bluebox, a blockchain recording technology that could be a boon to musicians and distributors alike. What it’s all about The problem, says Ditto Music CEO Lee Parsons, is that misplaced metadata can end up eating away at the bottom line. Recently Ditto made a royalty payment of 60,000 pounds sterling ($80,000) to the wrong artist. Parsons reportedly had to pay the correct artist out of his own pocket. But Bluebox will allow artists to address legal concerns, such as copyright registration, publishing, and mechanical splits. The app records music around legally-binding smart contracts, which are written …

Major file sharing company BitTorrent, a subsidiary of blockchain company Tron, is going to internally test its blockchain-based live streaming platform in Q3 2019. Platform overview BitTorrent announced the news in an official blog post on Aug. 27. According to the announcement, the streaming platform — called BitTorrent Live (BLive) — supports live video content and an instant messaging service. Additionally, its underlying system reportedly contains a top user chart and a user relationship feature. BitTorrent intends to roll out BLive in alpha, beta and full versions from Q3 2019 to Q1 2020. The current alpha version features a small …

Ethereum (ETH)-based decentralized video streaming startup Livepeer announced that it raised $8 million from institutional investors in its Series A funding round in a Medium post published on June 17. Per the announcement, the startup will use the newly acquired resources to support the further development of the Livepeer protocol, network, software and ecosystem to further adoption. The round was reportedly led by venture capital firm Northzone, which was also one of the first investors in Spotify. Other participants in the round purportedly include Digital Currency Group, Libertus, Collaborative Fund, Notation Capital, Compound, North Island, Coinfund, Haivision and StakeZero. Furthermore, …

A new, decentralized global platform is aiming to help streamers keep more of their earnings — and create a blockchain-driven ecosystem where they will find it easier to receive donations from their loyal viewers. According to DeStream, the esports market is growing, and as a result, audiences on popular streaming services such as Twitch, YouTube and Mixer are increasing by an average of 10 percent a quarter. This has coincided with a rise in the sums of money being donated to streamers by appreciative fans. A company presentation cites figures from SuperData Research which show donations to professional gamers neared …

A new blockchain-powered platform, combining streaming services and digital payments, aims to pay musicians 80 percent of the streaming revenue from their tracks, such as subscription services and advertising revenue — more than is reported to be standard practice. Choon, a recently launched blockchain-based platform, describes itself as “the blockchain’s music solution.” In essence, every time a track is played, the artist earns cryptocurrency. This could, in turn, eliminate another major problem that Choon has highlighted with regular artist royalty systems: as payment is daily, there will no longer be extended wait periods for artists to see a financial return …

Blockchain media company Slate Entertainment Group revealed its ‘seven figure deal’ on acquiring rights for a documentary about blockchain during the Cannes film festival, company representatives reported to Cointelegraph. A new lead to the movie business Slate intends to broadcast the documentary Beyond Bitcoin via its blockchain based online streaming platform Binge. The decentralized Binge platform provides low-cost, high-speed, high-definition media access for consumers worldwide, says the text of the press release. During the Cannes festival in May 2018, Slate appeared at the center of the buzz surrounding blockchain technology and its potential to alter the entertainment industry. In Cannes, …