Want more resources around this podcast? Keep up to date on the latest articles here.

The following transcript was created using artificial intelligence. There will be some grammatical errors below.

00:00:16:22 – 00:00:31:22

Richard Carthon: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Cryptocurrency. Your host here, Richard Carthon, and today got a very special guest working on a project that I’m sure a lot of you have heard of and I’m interested to learn even more about. We have Wes Levitt, who is the head of strategy over at Theta Labs. How are you doing today?

00:00:32:11 – 00:00:34:04

Wes Levitt: Doing great, Richard. Thanks for having me today.

00:00:34:18 – 00:00:43:04

Richard Carthon: Oh, no problem. Well, excited to learn more about everything that Data Labs is building and has going on. But first, let’s learn more about you. Can you give us some background on yourself?

00:00:43:27 – 00:01:18:01

Wes Levitt: Yeah, sure. So I grew up in the Bay Area, so perhaps it was destined to end up in some form of tech, but originally got my start working in real estate for the first, I don’t know, ten years of my life and at a mortgage REIT on the finance side and then at a private equity firm in San Francisco, um, you know, dabbled with crypto here and there since maybe 2014 or 2015 like a lot of folks, but didn’t really take it that seriously and you know did things like bought Ethereum at ten and sold it at 20 and thought I’d made a great decision.

00:01:18:12 – 00:01:56:18

Wes Levitt: Um, so you know, it was intending to stay in sort of in the finance real estate space. But I was in grad school, Berkeley, and it happened to be in 2016 when the Berkeley Computer Science Department was going crazy with developers all focusing on on crypto and how much innovation there came about with Ethereum and being able to program smart contracts well beyond, you know, just Bitcoin as money was the sort of the narrative of the day. And I was blown away not only with what they were doing, but also everyone in my business school class and half the law school students were all trying to pack into these classes to learn more about blockchain.

00:01:56:20 – 00:02:15:21

Wes Levitt: So that’s when the light bulb kind of went off that there’s something big going on here. And so since 2016, um, realized this is the space to be moving into full time and then join Theta Labs. And I think it was February of 2018 after I got to know their team right when the project was kicking off. So it’s been exciting. Five years since then.

00:02:15:23 – 00:02:54:00

Richard Carthon: Yeah, and quite the journey. It’s cool that you were able to learn about it in the grad school, see it evolve, get into Theorem at $10. I’m sure a lot of people’s ears perked up when they heard that. And just like you and some other people have been on the show, there’s been several people who got in early in the space and didn’t necessarily see the long term vision of it. But now that we are in, it can see where things are headed. So you you learn about how. Developers are building on smart contracts. ET cetera. And you learned about Theta Theta labs. So tell us about theta, which is the web3 blockchain infrastructure for video, media and entertainment and what you all are currently continuing to build out.

00:02:54:02 – 00:03:01:13

Richard Carthon: Because again, five years of building something, you’ve gone through a couple of bull and bear cycles. You’ve seen it, you’ve been there. What’s been the lessons?

00:03:02:03 – 00:03:34:21

Wes Levitt: Yeah, so it has evolved over time. You know, first started Theta, comes out of a video platform at the time, was called Sliver TV focused on esports. And originally the idea between the team at Theta and their their lead board member, who was one at the time, was putting their heads together to figure out a way they could reduce video delivery costs and make video delivery more efficient by using a distributed network. And of course, that’s been tried in the past with mixed success.

00:03:34:23 – 00:04:13:18

Wes Levitt: But the idea is you add a token to actually incentivize users and make them want to contribute their resources to this network, and then you can have a much more robust and and reliable distributed network versus a BitTorrent where people jump on, jump off, but they don’t stay current. So, um, that was the genesis of, of Theta and really the core still of what we do and what we’ve built is a network of users running nodes around the world who can distribute video amongst themselves that takes the burden off of video platforms, media companies, by doing some of the work and being a backbone for them, and they earn tokens as a reward for that.

00:04:14:05 – 00:04:20:10

Wes Levitt: But of course, along the way, like you said, five years is a long time, especially in the crypto space. So there’s been a few key

00:04:22:00 – 00:04:59:23

Wes Levitt: evolutions of that. So once we had this network of tens of thousands of users running our nodes, you know, originally it was mostly from them coming and saying we have other resources we want to contribute, like I’ve got CPU and GPU power that want to contribute and earn tokens for us. So what kind of work can I do there? And so then you had video encoding and transcoding and then they wanted more. So we started looking outside the box and you know, several companies have announced in the last few months they’re going to start using the Our Edge network to do training for LMS and other type of work.

00:04:59:25 – 00:05:16:08

Wes Levitt: So it’s kind of like we built something that was useful in our sphere of of video delivery. And that’s still true. But it also turns out that network, once you have a distributed network of thousands of users that are willing to contribute resources, that’s a really useful thing that can be pointed in a lot of different directions.

00:05:17:09 – 00:05:47:28

Richard Carthon: Definitely. It’s cool to see that evolution and starting with something, I would say a niche, but something that was needed in the space as far as, you know, video goes and the downfalls of trying to do it in a distributed way and all stream finding a way to streamline it and then finding ways to have it evolve in such a way that participants are not able to just receive the benefits of data network, but then also to be able to receive rewards and be awarded with with helping to build that out.

00:05:48:04 – 00:06:00:09

Richard Carthon: What have you seen? From your ecosystem, from your users, that has helped steer the type of innovations that you’ve been making over the last five years. Mm hmm.

00:06:00:22 – 00:06:39:27

Wes Levitt: Yeah. So a lot of that has come from our development community. And when we started launching hackathons because they were starting to build out things like in the defi space that we had no intention of really even going to, you know, theta’s EVM compatible. And it’s open source so anyone can build whatever they want on it. But it wasn’t really our focus. But it’s really interesting to see the direction they’ve taken it, uh, and, and started building things that we wouldn’t even have considered in the beginning. Like, um, users started launching Nfts on Theta Blockchain and we eventually launched our own platform called Theta Drop to take advantage of that.

00:06:39:29 – 00:07:14:28

Wes Levitt: And there’s also open source platforms run by communities as well, like Open theta, which is similar to Opensea. But you know, that’s a business that got very interesting that pretty much our users came to us and started building it out before you even conceived of it. And then we were fortunate enough to have a lot of connections and media because and Bertelsmann and some other media companies invested in our seed round. So then we started going to them and saying, Are you interested in this? And of course, you know, for the last few years, entertainment companies have been very hungry to launch NFT collections and how they can incorporate that into that strategy.

00:07:15:00 – 00:07:39:29

Wes Levitt: So, you know, it’s we try to stay flexible because, one, the space evolves very quickly, but two, we got a community of thousands of talented folks on the development side or otherwise. And you’d be crazy not to to listen to what they’re building because, you know, we’re just 15 or 15 or developers or so. We don’t have all the answers. We you know, it’s really a whole ecosystem that’s going to drive this thing forward.

00:07:40:18 – 00:08:13:25

Richard Carthon: Absolutely. And it’s good that y’all were seeing what your community wanted to build. I mean, building some defi and NFT projects on top. You know, like you said, you probably never even envisioned the infrastructure you originally made to be able to accommodate that. But yet you have in our continuing to evolve and add more things. But there is something key in there that you said, which is hackathons and hackathons I’ve found to be extremely helpful to find very talented devs, but then also seeing how they can potentially creatively make things within your own ecosystem.

00:08:13:27 – 00:08:17:13

Richard Carthon: So can you tell me a little bit about I think you have something interesting coming up?

00:08:17:29 – 00:08:50:10

Wes Levitt: Yeah, we just announced last week that our latest hackathon, I think this is our fifth going on. It just opened for submission two days ago on the 27th, I believe. So, yeah, we’re really excited about this coming up. And some of the coolest projects in our ecosystem came out of past hackathons and it’s it works great for two ways. One, the people who are already in your community, it’s great to both give them an incentive with the prizes so that they can actually see the value in working toward this. And sometimes that gets them off the ground to start doing it full time.

00:08:50:23 – 00:09:27:21

Wes Levitt: But also it focuses them around a mission and a competition. So something that may have been kicking around is a cool idea to do but didn’t get around to it. You know, this this puts a point to it and gives them a reason to to to really start putting that together. And then second, we you know, we usually run through Dev Post who has an enormous community of their own developers. And each time we attract new developers that may not know about theta just because crypto’s, you know, very fierce competition for developer talent to come to your ecosystem or maybe they weren’t even in crypto at all, but they were just curious about getting involved.

00:09:28:07 – 00:09:33:15

Wes Levitt: And that’s crucial to to continue to draw a new developer talent so you can keep building the ecosystem.

00:09:34:11 – 00:10:07:29

Richard Carthon: Definitely. And it’s really cool to see like the value that you’ve gotten back from from putting these on and also rewarding your community and finding a new way for new members to want to come in and be a part of it. To your point, there’s a lot of fierce competition for talent, and a hackathon is a really cool way to. For developers, even if they don’t come into your ecosystem, to build community and to meet other really cool people that are out there, but then also to just get exposure to to really cool products and ecosystems to to get in there and build something really unique.

00:10:08:03 – 00:10:36:16

Richard Carthon: So I now, having gone through and participated and putting one on and see how just strong and tremendous they can be, and for all those listening, if you are considering going into a hackathon, go do it. Even if you are new into the space or an OG in the space. It’s a really, really cool way to to get involved. Like Wes, you’ve now, you know, put on a couple of these. What do you think are some of the benefits for people that haven’t participated in the hackathon before?

00:10:37:15 – 00:11:10:27

Wes Levitt: Yeah. The first thing is, you know, a lot of people, if they’re working independently, they think this is a huge undertaking. I can’t do it myself, but it’s typically teams of three, 4 or 5 that get together and build these projects and think some people who are very talented themselves don’t realize how much more they can still accomplish when they team up with some other great folks. And I know as someone who can only do a limited amount of of, you know, API calls and Python, but not a developer in any real sense of the world.

00:11:11:12 – 00:11:40:14

Wes Levitt: It’s intimidating to me sometimes and not being able to build things from scratch. But a lot of the best teams, it’s not five developers that get together, maybe it’s 2 or 3 of them, but they need UX design or they need help in how they do the marketing or user acquisition for something they’re building. So that’s the main thing would say it’s kind of personal to my heart. Don’t shy away from participating just because you’re not a software developer. You may have a role in this as well.

00:11:41:04 – 00:12:12:02

Richard Carthon: Yeah, and I think that’s really cool to where you can have someone who is literally coming to the team to help strategize around what is a product that can be built. And then once it’s built, having someone that can come and then speak to that when it’s time for the presentation. So really appreciate. It’s been a little bit of time on that, but getting back over to Theta, y’all have been launching new projects like crazy, and one of the things that has just been released is your meta chain with the main net 4.0 coming out. Can you talk to us a little bit more about what this is and and what has the team excited about it?

00:12:12:09 – 00:12:51:18

Wes Levitt: Yeah. So we the code went live in December so people can build sub chains under basically the theta main chain at this time. And so a couple reasons we wanted to do this, but first was for scalability because that’s constantly a battle we have to fight to keep up and make sure you can serve the demands of dapps that are being built that have more and more uses. But we also wanted to allow projects to have more flexibility when they’re using theta blockchain because, you know, they may have a different use case than others and maybe this fee structure doesn’t work, or maybe they want a different set of validators that govern how their chain works.

00:12:51:20 – 00:13:29:03

Wes Levitt: So the idea is that you can do that and launch your own sub chain and have some ability to flex to customize how that works. But it all falls under the shared security of theta blockchain. So it’s not like you have to one the technical lift of building a new blockchain from scratch, but also if it has a very low, if it’s just getting started and has a very low market cap, it can be very easily attacked. You know, just a simple 51% attack if it’s only a couple hundred thousand dollars in value to do so, um, by building under the umbrella of an established chain like theta, that’s not really a concern.

00:13:29:12 – 00:13:59:25

Wes Levitt: So basically we’re trying to give the, the best of both worlds. You can have what you want to build out of the box, but also have an established framework rather than having to do all the work yourself. So we’re excited about the companies that are just starting to and projects they’re just starting to launch their sub chains. We have several like Replay and Teigen’s and some others coming up and hopefully Q2 they’ll be getting theirs out and then more coming throughout the year as more companies adopt this.

00:14:00:15 – 00:14:32:20

Richard Carthon: Yeah, that’s really cool. And I think it’s something that for a lot of new projects that are coming out, it’s something on their mind but they don’t really think about. Too seriously until it’s time to launch. Now they have to think about liquidity and a 51% attack is very real and unfortunately happens more often than a lot of projects would like to talk about. So being able to go into the theta ecosystem to help bridge some of that security risk and deal with that, it’s a very unique way to approach that.

00:14:32:22 – 00:14:45:02

Richard Carthon: So really cool to to see that. Also, I believe you have some other things on the on the roadmap that are pretty exciting that I think you can share a couple of those with us.

00:14:45:23 – 00:15:22:13

Wes Levitt: Yeah. So we just it just came out that we have a new partnership with a company called ABS-CBN, which isn’t too well known globally, but they are the largest media company in the Philippines. So in Southeast Asia that have a huge presence and we actually worked with them last year already for an NFT drop they did with us. But what we’ve been working on with them in the last few months is we’re actually going to be using our Theta Video API, which is a think of it as a very simple way for you to access this this data video delivery network we built without a huge lift.

00:15:22:15 – 00:16:00:00

Wes Levitt: To do that, you can just submit a video file to our API and it spits out a link that, you know, akin to like a YouTube embed where you can build an entire video platform just with this API and all of it uses our theta technology underneath. So that is going to be implemented with ABS-CBN for some of their video properties that they have in the Philippines. So this is we like it to begin with just on its merits, but it also like it because it illustrates why we we look at all the different things that data network can do is sort of like a decentralized suite of products.

00:16:00:02 – 00:16:19:11

Wes Levitt: And even if one company we first meet because they are interested in nfts, that is one way for us to build a relationship. And then some of the other things like they may have use of video delivery or if they want to use our network for compute for Transcoding, then that’s sort of opens the door to other ways we can work together.

00:16:20:06 – 00:16:52:00

Richard Carthon: Definitely. And that sounds really cool and congrats on that partnership. I know a lot of work goes into getting that type of partnerships underway. And I think with with things like that, as you start to build this robust product, one of the challenges is to get through the noise and to get what you’re building in front of the right people so that I can continue to evolve. What do you think’s been a core lesson of growing community and getting more people within your ecosystem?

00:16:54:15 – 00:17:30:15

Wes Levitt: I mean, I can say what I think worked for us, obviously hard to speak for, for I’m sure there’s several ways people have been successful in growing big communities, but for us think it’s just been trying to stay true to what we’re doing and that everything that we try to build is focused on media and entertainment. And so that’s like we talked about that’s evolved a little bit over time to some other things like compute and nfts and such. But it all still centers around that focus where our expertise is, where we started as a company and where our advisors and our investors come from.

00:17:30:17 – 00:18:02:27

Wes Levitt: So I think that’s important because people join Theta Community, usually because they see that as an interesting differentiation. Whereas if if you just launch a new layer one and the whole pitches that were faster and we’re going to do the same thing as everyone else did, but just we’re newer, so we’re the new shiny object. Um, you can build hype, but don’t think it’s very lasting because there’s just going to be, you know, you’re getting people that are just looking for the flavor of the day as opposed to someone who actually sees something unique about what you’re building.

00:18:03:15 – 00:18:35:19

Richard Carthon: Yeah, I think that is very important. And to once you build out that roadmap and you have like a clear vision of what’s what you’re ultimately trying to accomplish and people connect with that, you stay on that. Because unfortunately I have seen some projects that, like you said, kind of keep following the new shiny object and they get very okay at a couple of things. Instead of getting very good at the main thing that they’re trying to do. And so focus is always a good thing to keep in mind. But, you know. There’s a lot of really cool things that theta has going on.

00:18:35:21 – 00:19:01:12

Richard Carthon: But so far, 20, 23 in the world of Web3 has been very interesting, to say the least. And one of the things that is coming out of 2023 very strong in response to everything that happened in 2022, especially with Ftxs is regulation. Yeah. What are some of the things that you’re saying that’s going on in the world of regulation and, and yeah. What has your attention in that right now?

00:19:02:09 – 00:19:13:10

Wes Levitt: Yeah. I mean yeah, as you said, that’s, that’s definitely been the theme for the last few months and especially in the US. I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better and.

00:19:15:03 – 00:19:46:04

Wes Levitt: Yeah, up until maybe six months ago, I still had hope that, you know, the FCC and the other regulators, they can be heavy handed at times, but they generally had the industry’s best interests at heart. They’re trying to protect consumers. Um, they’re going after the real, you know, the bad actors in the space. The last few months is starting to feel like they’re going to, after everything critical to, to the cryptocurrency space entirely. And, you know, I guess it remains to be seen just how far they’ll go.

00:19:46:06 – 00:20:17:06

Wes Levitt: But yeah, it definitely has me concerned. Um, and even though I live in Amsterdam now, you know, Im from the US originally and so it is painful to see them. What looks like they’re going to be doing is driving out a lot of the activity of crypto companies. And yeah, it sucks to see mean the US and particular the Bay Area where I’m from has benefited hugely because they embrace technology and technology companies and it made it the most competitive place in the world for technological development.

00:20:17:08 – 00:20:48:05

Wes Levitt: And then, you know, chasing away crypto. It feels like a huge mistake to me because it’s a more distributed global and flexible space than anything previously in tech. These companies aren’t just going to go away, they’re going to relocate to Singapore or Dubai or Switzerland or whoever is saying, you know, we’re happy to take the benefit. If you guys don’t want this innovation happening in your country, then we’ll just, you know, we’ll take the benefit instead. So I think it’s a shame.

00:20:48:07 – 00:21:02:22

Wes Levitt: I don’t disagree with everything the regulators do. And I think that’s it’s good for them to protect consumers and and putting guardrails in place. But the way they’ve gone about it is seems just like they’re they’re they’re trying to drive a stake through the heart of crypto.

00:21:03:22 – 00:21:05:05

Richard Carthon: Yeah it’s um.

00:21:07:06 – 00:21:10:01

Richard Carthon: Each week is new information.

00:21:10:03 – 00:21:41:09

Richard Carthon: That’s coming out, and I see regulation as both a benefit and a hindrance depending on timing and what ultimately is being done. Regulation when put in place in a. Well thought out. We can help move the entire space faster as it relates to the US because then more money can start coming in because there’s clear guardrails on what to happen. And it was a matter of time before that really start to occur.

00:21:41:21 – 00:22:04:12

Richard Carthon: The other side of it though, is that the more regulation put in place can completely stifle innovation and could ultimately stop it. If it gets so extreme, it can completely say no more. And like you said, then people who are building over in the States have to relocate, go elsewhere, because I think we’re past the time of like, oh, guess they stopped it. I guess there’s no more crypto. We’re past that. We are. We are well past that.

00:22:04:26 – 00:22:37:17

Wes Levitt: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, just the fact that there are friendly jurisdictions, you’re already seeing companies go there. But like you said, you can shut down a payment rail or a specific company, but the idea is out there now, you can’t kill ideas and especially ones that, you know, it’s in the the core of of, you know, the beliefs of most people on Web3 to operate in a decentralized and distributed way. It’s not something where you can just put a notice on the door of the headquarters and think they’re going to go away.

00:22:37:19 – 00:23:09:14

Wes Levitt: Like it’s it’s silly. And yeah, agree with you that you know, some regulation if done right, could be good. You know we’ve tried to work with many companies over the years who just said we’d like to to integrate what you’re building. And you know, as part of that to pay for the workers on our network, they’d have to hold tokens at their company and they just couldn’t get comfortable. From a legal standpoint. It wasn’t that they said it’s a hard no, but they just said we can’t say for sure that it’d be safe to do that without clear regulation.

00:23:09:16 – 00:23:31:02

Wes Levitt: So that’s a perfect example where, you know, some clear guidance would be helpful, but not as the clear guidance is. Well, there is no clear guidance, you know, not if it’s this regulation by enforcement. Well, they’re just going to every time a company gets charged with an enforcement action, then we go, okay, well, guess that’s not something you’re supposed to do, but that’s the only way we find out. Really?

00:23:31:08 – 00:23:53:24

Richard Carthon: Yeah, it’s very real. React. React theory. So the very the reacting to everything instead of being very proactive and I think they’re trying to swing towards proactive, but they’re being proactive without having enough knowledge in information to be proactive about the things. So it’s like this strange balancing act that we’re kind of going through right now. Yeah.

00:23:53:26 – 00:24:25:09

Wes Levitt: And there’s some folks in government, at least in the US, that are very well versed in this stuff and looking for a positive way forward. Like people all know Hester Peirce at the SEC and Cynthia Loomis think is her name the senator. She’s proposed some very astute legislation that would you know, it’s got real guardrails to make sure that consumers aren’t being taken advantage of by scams and crypto and that they have transparency and all those good things. But it doesn’t just stifle innovation.

00:24:25:11 – 00:24:32:11

Wes Levitt: So there are some good voices out there at the highest levels, but right now they don’t seem to be winning the battle.

00:24:32:25 – 00:24:33:15

Wes Levitt: Yeah.

00:24:34:00 – 00:25:02:04

Richard Carthon: And hopefully we can start to see a shift in the other direction, but time will tell. It’s something I know I’m monitoring closely and I’m sure every all the listeners out there are too. But Wes, as we kind of get to the end of our conversation, I always like to wrap with a couple of fun questions. And the first one I’d like to ask is with all the information that you have learned, if you could go back and tell yourself 1 or 2 pieces of wisdom when you first started at Theta Labs, what would you tell yourself? Hmm.

00:25:03:09 – 00:25:37:11

Wes Levitt: Uh, I think I would tell myself to expect things to change quickly and, you know, stay nimble because and maybe this is true in a lot of tech fields, but coming from real estate finance, I had the mindset of you just learn how things are and then they’re going to continue to stay that way. And it’s like an upheaval every six months. Or, you know, we might be building out a product and after several months building it and then going out to to talk with customers about it, they find out it’s they’re looking for something totally different.

00:25:37:13 – 00:26:06:11

Wes Levitt: And then you have to learn to get that feedback early so that if you have to change how that product works or change to a totally different product, you do it before you. You spend too much time going in the wrong direction. It took me a while to learn that mindset. Um, and maybe that’s just my personal thing coming to the tech in general, but I think it’s turbocharged in crypto with everything moving quick. So just stay, um, stay nimble and be ready for the space to continue to evolve at this breakneck pace. You know, it’s not going to change.

00:26:06:20 – 00:26:40:04

Richard Carthon: Yeah, I think that is a great reminder. I think sometimes we can put our blinders on and be like, Oh, this is it. This is the the product that I know the world wants and then pick it up six months later. And everyone’s like, Actually, no. And you probably could have got that feedback two months ago and now you could be four months closer to what that actually is instead of, you know, six months in and and you’re basically back at scratch. Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, I think that’s a really good core lesson and we definitely appreciate that. But as we wrap, what is a final thought that you want to leave with all the listeners today?

00:26:41:07 – 00:27:19:00

Richard Carthon: Yeah. Guess, uh, well, think sentiment’s turning around a lot the last few months, but there’s still a lot of, of anxiety with regulation coming and everything. But, um, I would just say stay positive because, uh, you know, crypto has always gone through these cycles and, you know, I would like to look at that website that counts the number of times that Bitcoin has been declared dead like it’s in the thousands now. And just remember, everyone in the space is going to keep building regardless of what headwinds seem to come, because obviously we’ve created something even in its early stages that has some value to people and that people find useful.

00:27:19:02 – 00:27:40:02

Wes Levitt: And there’s still people that believe that both in the space in the corporate sector and government, um, think, just not get bogged down by the periods where it seems like every headline is negative because um, you know, just keep building and just like every time before the cycle will turn and, and things will turn out well.

00:27:41:15 – 00:27:53:19

Richard Carthon: I think that’s a great final thought. Thank you for sharing that with us. For everyone listening. You can go over to theta token org for more information, but what are some other ways that people can connect with you and keep learning more about Theta?

00:27:54:16 – 00:28:07:09

Wes Levitt: Yeah, our website’s a great place to start. You can also find the link to theta GitHub there for developers. Or if you want the latest news, you can follow us at Theta Underscore network on Twitter or my personal handle is Wes Underscore Levitt.

00:28:08:02 – 00:28:19:12

Richard Carthon: Perfect. Well, let’s thank you again for spending all of the time that you have with us today. Drop some really great knowledge and I’m sure our listeners are better for it. And of course, for all of our listeners out there, make sure you stay cryptocurrency.