Comparing Verasity and Theta.TV
Verasity recently reached out to me to see if I would like to do a comparison of their platform to another live streaming platform. I decided to compare it to Theta.TV. Let’s see how these two platforms line up!
Note that I have used Verasity and Theta.TV before, I've tested them, and have no financial gain to make by convincing you to use either Verasity or Theta.TV. Instead, I am going to share with you all the information I have at hand
The first and most important thing I saw was that there were no problems with the VRA token as I was able to deposit, withdraw, and trade my tokens as needed. Contrastingly, when you look at Theta.TV, your TFUEL used on the platform is not withdrawable and you cannot trade your tokens after they’ve been deposited. You can only deposit, donate, or spend them at the shop.
Theta.TV
All of this information on Theta.TV and more can be found here: https://www.publish0x.com/at-scottcbusiness/why-i-don-t-recommend-the-theta-network-xygqro
But specifically, you can find in their help section how TFuel can be earned and spent. Note that they use your excess bandwidth and give it to other steamers to reward you with the “free” TFuel you get and that you cannot get it off the platform without buying from their store: https://community.theta.tv/tfuel-on-sliver-faq/?utm_campaign=tfuel#what-can-i-do-with-tfuel
For Theta.TV monetization it says only TFuel partners can withdraw funds https://community.theta.tv/tfuel-affiliate-partner-guide/, but what does that mean for the rest of us? It means your crypto is stuck there and not truly owned by you. While you could buy a face mask from them for $20 or 2000+ TFuel, any good item like a Nintendo Switch was out of stock at the time of writing this.
Why focus so much on the way the token is used on their platform though? The reason people are going to these platforms is only for monetization and the use of cryptocurrency. Their rules are in line with any legacy platform (ie. Going beyond enforcing free speech constitutional rights). So if they have the same rules around censorship as YouTube or Twitch and you cannot actually monetize or get the cryptocurrency you earn off of Theta, then what’s the point of using it all? Note that out of their three major partners, Samsung was the biggest and now displays a message that they have terminated the website and service entirely: https://samsungvr.com/
In terms of actual users, you’d think they have a lot considering the value of the token, their partnerships, and media advisors. However, their top streams have very few viewers and there is very little activity on the platform. They haven’t released any statistics or analytics that I could find to say otherwise so let’s check out their discover page. When looking at their live streams: https://www.theta.tv/discover/streams there were 43 ranging from 1-65 viewers with the exception of the two most popular streams with 90 viewers and 170 viewers. In total, there were less than 1000 viewers and somehow the value of Theta is $0.59 at the time of writing this with a market cap of 592 million. The answer is simple, most of what’s going on with Theta is coming from people running nodes
Verasity
So, this brings me to Verasity. You can get my original breakdown of VRA here: https://www.minds.com/scottcbusiness/blog/verasity-is-the-best-attention-based-video-rewards-model-1001689319415250944
The main difference between Verasity and Theta.TV is that Verasity is more of a service than a platform. While VRA is easily acquirable, tradeable, and has no restrictions like you get while trying to use Theta.TV, to actually run a video with Verasity requires you to embed it on a website over a YouTube video. The only drawback here is you are limited to YouTube videos, but as we addressed, Theta.TV is just as centralized as YouTube.
Verasity is also used in a very different way too. While you can enable ads to you AND your viewers can earn VRA, you can also put up VRA as a reward for your viewers. So instead of the platform giving you tokens for watching like with Theta (even though they are really “buying” your bandwidth), they will give you and your viewers tokens for ads through their platform. Creators can also incentivize viewers to watch the entire stream or video by putting up some VRA as a reward for their viewers. This way, loyal viewers can be rewarded and incentivized to stay through advertisements. This way, both parties get value and VRA tokens too.
A great example of this was recently for Esports FightClub running the PUBG Asia mobile tournament with 10 pro teams and 1000 entrants for $15,000 found here: https://esportsfightclub.com/pubgasia
This one tournament alone brought in over 8.6 million views which you can see the information on here: https://medium.com/verasity/esports-fight-club-launches-ultimate-warrior-showdown-with-huge-partners-839c358e2532
Verasity claims to support over 2 million video publishers with their SDK products using overlay on video players to increase engagement and revenues by up to 35% which is huge. They have a market cap of just 2.3 million and currently, the price of VRA is $0.00059 as of writing this. This means that while Verasity has way more adoption and usage, it still has a market cap 200x small than Theta. This makes it a pretty interesting investment with a lot of potential upsides whereas Theta seems to have peaked and is now on the decline ever since the Samsung VR website was terminated.
In Summary:
Verasity helps you earn more as a viewer or as a creator, you have ownership of your tokens and full access to them, you will boost your viewership, and you will actually earn more tangible cryptocurrency.
Theta.TV does not let earn anything tangible as a viewer, only partner streamers have claimed to have the ability to withdraw tokens but it doesn’t say so on their website, you will likely not have more viewers, and you won’t earn something tangible that you truly own or have full access to.
Let me know what you think about Verasity and Theta.TV and how they line up for you. What’s your go-to streaming platform? Are you invested in TFuel, Theta, Or VRA? Share your thoughts in the comments below and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!
Disclaimer:
This was a sponsored post by Verasity though everything I have shared above is my own opinion and regarding the facts and statistics, those are publicly available and I simply shared the information to back my claims.