As we enter 2020, one of the key focus areas for the Theta project is decentralization: of governance, protocol design, and development just a name a few aspects. That takes many different forms including community-operated Guardian Nodes and open-source tools to allow anyone to develop on the Theta Network. Another important aspect is decentralizing the Validator Nodes — the core nodes of the Theta protocol that propose and produce new blocks in the Theta blockchain. In addition to the nodes run by Theta Labs, earlier this year Blockchain Ventures launched their own validator node on the Theta blockchain, and now we’re excited to announce the next enterprise validator node: gumi Cryptos Inc.

gumi Cryptos Inc. is the representative member of gumi Cryptos Capital, which is the blockchain/crypto venture fund launched by gumi Inc., a publicly-traded leading global mobile game publisher and developer (https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/3903:JP). gumi Cryptos Capital offers its portfolio companies a strategic venture capital investment partner with unique access to the Japan cryptocurrency market through its network of investors and management board. Since launching in 2018, gumi Cryptos Capital has invested in many top crypto projects including Origin, Evercoin, Spacemesh, Opensea and Vega Protocol.

Adding gumi Cryptos Inc. as a validator node is a critical step towards decentralization for the Theta protocol, both to make governance of the protocol less dependent on Theta Labs, but also on a technical and practical level. The validator nodes are directly responsible for producing the new blocks that Theta blockchain is built on, and if more than a third of them are corrupted or otherwise out of consensus, the blockchain cannot function properly. When Google Cloud suffered a massive outage on the U.S. East Coast back in July, one of the Theta validator nodes temporarily went down as well. While the Theta blockchain still operated normally and maintained 100% uptime, it highlights how important it is to have many redundant validator nodes. Diversifying block production across geographies, network architectures, and cloud providers is necessary to prevent these threats, and the addition of gumi Cryptos Inc. as a validator is a strong step forward to that goal.

Welcome gumi Cryptos Inc. as an enterprise validator node on Theta Network! There are several more enterprise validators on the way, including a global 100 tech company that has already launched their validator node on Theta Network. We’ll share an update soon alongside their public announcement of their long-term strategic investment in blockchain technology.