Theta awarded US Patent 11,763,332 for Edge Computing Platform supported by Smart Contract-enabled…

Theta awarded US Patent 11,763,332 for Edge Computing Platform supported by Smart Contract-enabled Blockchain Network

Theta Labs has now been awarded U.S. Patent 11,763,332 for “Edge Computing Platform supported by Smart Contract-enabled Blockchain Network”, validating the innovative and novel approaches to a decentralized Edge Network built by the Theta team. The patent can be viewed here by accessing the USPTO website and entering “11763332” in the Quick Lookup section, or directly as a PDF here.

The core of this new patent is the process of effectively combining an edge compute network with the security of smart contracts and the instant settlement of crypto transactions. In this process, a computation task from a ‘task initiator’ node is registered on Theta blockchain, and assigned to an node within Theta Edge Network, with task details sent by the initiator to the Edge Node through secure peer-to-peer connection over the Theta blockchain. The Edge Node then determines a solution to the computational task (rendering, transcoding, model training, etc.). The solution may be verified on-chain by a smart contract, with a corresponding token reward from the initiator paid to the Edge Node via the smart contract.

While Theta Edge Nodes already support decentralized streaming and encoding/transcoding, there is a massive opportunity to expand this to general compute use cases — for generative AI, smart grids, IoT, cloud gaming, and much more. Not only can an edge network like Theta’s deliver this compute power cheaper by relying on untapped resources, it can do so more flexibly with pay as you go models using Theta-based tokens. As these use cases grow, so will the opportunities for node operators as nodes come into higher demand. This new patent sets the foundation for these many generalized compute tasks to be processed via Theta Edge Network.

This patent approval follows previous Theta patents issued for decentralized data streaming and delivery, ultra-high transaction throughput micropayments, methods and systems for peer node discovery, decentralized DRM via NFTs, and preventing denial-of-service attacks in decentralized edge networks, and decentralized edge storage with flexible file sharding, creating a portfolio of patents to further differentiate and protect the Theta technology and ecosystem.

In short, the Theta Edge Network uses these patented techniques to achieve high scalability and high resource availability, and attains the following characteristics:

• Self-organizing, self-adaptive, self-evolving, minimal operational overhead, highly available, and robust
• Plug and play: a network node can join or leave at any time
• Supports delivery of various types of content (e.g., livestream, VoD, data blob, etc.) within a unified data retrieval framework.
• Highly secure, Digital Rights Management (DRM) compatible, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compatible
• Decentralized edge compute, which can execute various types of jobs including AI/deep learning model training and inference, as well as video transcoding and relaying.

Theta awarded US Patent 11,763,332 for Edge Computing Platform supported by Smart Contract-enabled… was originally published in Theta Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.