Theta Fuel (TFUEL) is the "fuel" and payment instrument for Theta Network
One such ecosystem was the blockchain platform Theta Network, which issued two different tokens: Theta Token and Theta Fuel. This article will discuss the latter.
What is Theta Fuel?
Theta Fuel, or TFUEL, is an operational or utility token of the Theta Network ecosystem. As the name implies, it is the "fuel" required to operate Theta Network's decentralized platform.
The Theta Network is a leading blockchain-based video streaming platform or a decentralized streaming service. In fact, It is the decentralized counterpart of the world's most popular video platform, YouTube.
However, unlike the same YouTube service, Theta Network stores and processes data not on central servers but on a set of nodes connected to a distributed network. These nodes provide Theta Network with computing power for encoding, decoding, 3D rendering, and other operations required to process streaming video.
Another difference is that the Theta Network ecosystem provides a reward system in the form of tokens for computing power providers.
How did the Theta Fuel token come about, and what is it used for?
Before the launch of Theta Network's main net in March 2019, there was only one token in its ecosystem — Theta Token (THETA). But along with the mainnet launch, the Theta Network team also released a second token, TFUEL. At the same time, the token was listed on the exchange.
The price of the TFUEL token at the time of listing was $0.17, and its capitalization exceeded $40 million. The Theta Fuel token reached its all-time high in June 2021 at $0.68.
As of February 2025, the Theta Fuel token price is $0.049, which is 190% higher than the altcoin's value at the time of listing and nearly 93% below its all-time high. According to CoinMarketCap, the TFUEL token ranks 155th in the overall cryptocurrency ranking by market capitalization, which is $332 million.
According to data from the same period, all existing Theta Fuel tokens, which number $6.84 billion, are traded on the market. However, TFUEL does not have a maximum issuance, which makes the altcoin an inflationary asset. This means that over time, the total number of Theta Fuel tokens will only grow, which could create additional pressure on the altcoin's value.
At the same time, the Theta Network protocol includes a burn-in mechanism that reduces the total number of TFUELs to regulate the supply of tokens on the market.
The Theta Fuel token has several uses:
- Gas payment: with TFUELs, users pay a fee for all transactions made on Theta Network, including NFT token transactions;
- Rewarding users who provide their computing resources to Theta Network for video streaming;
- Micropayments: users can send donations to their favorite authors of content published on the Theta Network platform.
This provides demand for the token: the more users the platform has, the more in demand the Theta Fuel altcoin will be. So far, Theta Network is significantly inferior to the well-known centralized streaming services, but in the future, the picture may change.