About a month ago, PewDiePie announced that he would be supporting DLive, a new blockchain-powered video streaming and hosting service aiming to compete against YouTube. The company reported a staggering 67% monthly growth after the biggest Youtuber joined the platform and hosted a couple of exclusive streams.
PewDiePie stated that DLive will be his platform of choice for live streaming and gaming. At the moment, DLive has over 5 million monthly active users. Amongst them about 70 thousand streamers including some well-known personalities in the gaming community. Just in March, DLive had close to 3 million.
The community of video content creators was surprised by an exclusive deal between DLive and PewDiePie – AKA Felix Kjellberg – most known for his outstanding battle against T Series for the title of the biggest YouTube channel. PewDiePie has over 95 million subs on YouTube. His videos regularly accumulate 4-5 million views, often, within a 24-hour time frame.
DLive is a streaming platform built on the Lino Network Blockchain and uses a special cryptocurrency to reward both streamers and viewers. The system is decentralized and does not charge its users for any actions. The only monetization scheme employed by the platform is charging users when they exchange tokens for money.
Wilson Wei, the co-founder of Lino Network, stated that ”blockchain is the perfect technology to solve” issues related to the lack of transparency and streaming services taking notable cuts from those who create video content. As of right now, DLive aims to outgrow Twitch, a streaming platform owned by Amazon, and attract more content creators with their monetization model. Twitch takes roughly 50% revenue cut from streamers.
Many YouTube users complained about copyright strikes and unclear rules in regards to content moderation while Twitch users also expressed their disdain with questionable content moderation and even monetization model employed by the platform. Considering the fact that many video content creators feel less encouraged to support big tech companies, a decentralized video streaming platform may be just what the world needs.
YouTube and Twitch need strong competition to have an incentive to improve. PewDiePie’s decision was welcomed by some prominent YouTube personalities.
