- Ant Digital Technologies‘ Web3 brand, ZAN, joined the Theta ecosystem as a strategic Enterprise Validator Node operator alongside Google and Samsung.
- Theta Labs launched AI Gaming Services and shipped AI Characters, a product allowing developers to integrate AI-driven NPCs into real game loops.
- The project presented joint research on ShuttleCross, a cross-chain framework, at the IEEE/IFIP DSN 2026 conference.
Theta Labs expanded aggressively in July 2026, opening a new front with the launch of its AI gaming services vertical and the debut of AI Characters. The product enables developers to define game worlds with unique characters that return machine-readable decisions directly into a game loop, demonstrated in a live poker demo hosted at ai-game-demo.thetaedgecloud.com.
Meanwhile, the company’s developer ecosystem received a significant boost with the public release of its AI Characters repository on GitHub. Teams can now run locally, define character personalities, and feed them real game state events, with the reference implementation covering setup scripts and a full API specification.
The validator council grew further as ZAN, the Web3 brand of Ant Digital Technologies, joined as a strategic Enterprise Validator Node operator. The node now handles transaction validation and network security, staking THETA alongside partners like Google, Samsung, and Sony. ZAN brings deep compliance experience from one of Asia’s largest payments platforms.
Consequently, joint research between Theta and Professor Zhen Xiao’s team was presented at the IEEE/IFIP DSN 2026 conference in Charlotte. The paper introduces ShuttleCross, a framework for cross-chain smart contract invocation that guarantees atomicity while addressing existing latency problems.
A rebuilt EdgeCloud homepage now unifies GPU compute, inference endpoints, and developer tools in one clear view. Finally, Soongsil University’s HUMANE Lab became the 36th member of Theta’s academic network, using EdgeCloud to power research on multimodal AI tackling misinformation and bias.
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