We’re excited to announce the release of the beta version of the Theta Edge Cacher, allowing users to share their excess bandwidth resources as a caching node via a desktop client, without the need to be a viewer on any video platform. The beta Edge Cacher is included as an upgrade to the existing Theta Pre-Guardian Node client and can be downloaded for Windows PC here: PGN / beta Edge Cacher. (Current version: 1.0.44)

Unlike watching a video on SLIVER.tv and sharing your stream, the beta Edge Cacher allows you to act as a pure relayer in the Theta Network. For the more dedicated contributors with significant bandwidth to share, the Edge Cacher is the way for you to share 24/7 in a relatively resource-light client. Your device will experience less CPU load than that of a regular relayer on SLIVER.tv, and since you aren’t running any browser, there aren’t any browser crashes or cache limits to deal with. Note, your eligibility to run the Edge Cacher is determined by your system’s performance. If your upload bandwidth is not sufficient to effectively contribute to the network you might not be peered with other users, since priority for those peer slots would be given to users who can best contribute to the network. The v1 beta does not offer real-time analytics of bandwidth performance, but you can monitor this using the Performance tab of Task Manager, or if you are more technically-inclined with a free network analyzer like Wireshark.

In this first iteration, TFUEL earnings will be distributed monthly to the on-chain Theta address you have verified in the PGN client.

Other PGN/edge cacher client updates include:

Info section added, with direct links to Theta wallet, explorer, and website

An update installer that automatically updates your client to new versions when they are released

A messaging feature for secure direct messages from Theta Labs

Various minor bug fixes, including the window minimization issue that some users reported

With 900+ active PGN clients running as of today, the overall network of Theta relayers just became a lot stronger with today’s release. Running the Edge Cacher doesn’t just let you earn TFUEL for sharing your bandwidth, it gives us valuable data to keep improving the Theta Network and the production Edge Cacher. To that end, please send us any feedback/issues with the Edge Cacher to support@thetatoken.org. We appreciate all the growing number of contributors to the Theta Network!

Cheers,

The Theta Team

*The production versions of the Guardian Node client and Edge Cacher will be separate applications; this combined version is only for the early PGN and beta Edge Cacher builds.