ARK provides users, developers, and startups with innovative blockchain technologies. They aim to create an entire ecosystem of linked chains and a virtual spiderweb of endless use-cases that make ARK highly flexible, adaptable, and scalable. ARK is a secure platform designed for mass adoption and will deliver the services that consumers want and developers need. It is fast, decentralized, scalable, collaborative, bridging and open-source. The ARK Desktop Wallet is natively built for all major Operating Systems. ARK wallets connect to fully synced network peers removing the need to download the full blockchain. ARK operates using a Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus algorithm. Unlike Bitcoin, in which miners with expensive rigs secure network transactions, the ARK network is secured by delegates. There are hundreds of potential delegates, but token holders in the ARK ecosystem continuously vote on who actually gets to be an active, forging delegate. Only 51 delegates make the cut. As a token holder, you’re only allowed to vote for one delegate at a time. The fee to vote/unvote is just 1 ARK, so it’s advantageous to at least vote once for a delegate you support. The more ARK tokens you own, the more powerful your vote. ARK was launched in February of this year by 27 members spread across the world. With team members located everywhere from California to Bulgaria – the ARK Crew is truly decentralized. The team currently consists of 15 core members. The ARK infrastructure is modeled heavily on that of three older projects: Bitshares, Crypti, and Lisk. In fact, some of the ARK developers were previously developers on some of those projects. Francois-Xavier (FX) Thoorens, the CTO, was a core developer at Lisk in 2016. Ark Community A diverse group of people and skill sets, including Full Stack and Web Developers, Network Engineers, Hardware Experts, Money Managers, Musicians, Traders, Social Media Promoters, and Business Owners, uniting to realize a vision shared by 30 members of the ARK Crew. All passionately devoted to collaboration and the development of the ARK ecosystem and community. Ark Token Secured by a cryptographic blockchain network similar to Lisk and Crypti, running on a Delegated Proof of Stake Consensus Algorithm developed by Bitshares. ARK DPoS provides a newly adapted voting system and incorporates many improvements over previous DPoS implementations. SmartBridge To increase the reach of the ARK platform, ARK bridges together useful and proprietary blockchains through the use of ARK SmartBridges. These SmartBridges allow for communication among validated bridged blockchains with the ability to perform tasks and advanced functions. Through the use of SmartBridges, the ARK Crew is able to connect many popular blockchains and finally create a unifying bond among different ecosystems. As examples, the first blockchains the ARK Crew will bridge are: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Lisk, 3rd Party Anonymous Network Integration, one or more proprietary gaming economy tokens (Codename: A***** [Ticker: A***]), and numerous other bridges connecting new and already existing blockchains in the future. Security Because we understand security is a major point of concern for everyone, cryptographic and security principals are incorporated throughout the entire Development Life Cycle to guarantee a secure core meeting the requirements and expectations of our users. Through continuous risk analysis and internal recurring penetration testing, we provide a system that fulfills the high standards required by this type of environment. Privacy ARK Anonymous Network Integration provides ARK users with optional privacy when sending ARK transactions throughout all of the services developed for the ARK platform. Anonymization services could be potentially provided by a 3rd Party technology integration Partnership. Self-Sustaining The ARK Crew has a mission to make blockchain technology easily accessible to consumers, even to the point where consumers do not know that they are using it. We not only develop the tools bridging the virtual with reality, but also provide the unique services consumers want, understand, and are willing to purchase using ARK. The ARK Crew develops additional platforms and services benefiting from the ARK technology, providing online and offline revenue streams for the ARK Platform, and leading to faster research and development of new and exciting ways to encourage consumer participation, educating them about blockchain technology, while simultaneously adding value to the ARK coin. By incorporating revenue streams into our projects, the ARK Crew can provide even more unique services for user adoption as we grow.
Theta is a decentralized video delivery network, powered by users and an innovative new blockchain. Theta is an open source protocol purpose-built to power the decentralized streaming network and will allow for vertical decentralized apps (DApps) to be built on top of the platform to enable esports, music, TV/movies, education, enterprise conferencing, peer-to-peer streaming, and more. SLIVER.tv’s DApp will be the first application built on the Theta network leveraging its existing user base of millions of esports viewers. DSN and the Theta protocol solve various challenges the video streaming industry faces today. First, Theta tokens are used as an incentive to encourage individual users to share their redundant memory and bandwidth resources as caching nodes for video streams. This improves the quality of stream delivery and solves the “last-mile” delivery problem, the main bottleneck for traditional stream delivery pipelines, especially for high resolution high bitrate 360° virtual reality (VR) streams. Second, with sufficient amount of caching nodes, the majority of viewers will pull streams from peering caching nodes. This significantly reduces content delivery network (CDN) bandwidth costs, which is a major concern for video streaming sites. Lastly, the Theta network greatly improves the streaming market efficiency by streamlining the video delivery process. For example, advertisers can target end viewers at a lower cost and reward influencers more transparently.The Theta blockchain introduces three novel concepts: Reputation Dependent Mining: In the Theta protocol, the caching nodes play the role of miners in the blockchain. The block reward is not a constant, but depends on the reputation score of the caching node that mined the block. To obtain more mining rewards, miners not only spend computation power to mine blocks, but also relay video streams to downstream viewers to increase their reputation scores. Global Reputation Consensus: We propose a mechanism for the Theta network to reach the global consensus on the reputation scores for each caching node. Proof-of-Engagement: We introduce a novel Proof-of-Engagement scheme to prove that viewers legitimately consume the video streams, providing better transparency to advertisers and a basis for viewers to earn Theta tokens for engaging with the content.