Amid its ongoing war with crypto, video giant YouTube has signed a new deal with one of the world’s biggest popular YouTubers. PewDiePie, the top-subscribed independent video maker on YouTube, now has to leave blockchain video platform Dlive to stream exclusively on YouTube.
YouTube officially announced the news on May 4, with PewDiePie claiming that the agreement was a “natural fit.”
In April 2019, PewDiePie had signed a partnership with blockchain-based content sharing platform Dlive. PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, said that he decided to stream via DLive because he was treated “like a real partner,” noting that Dlive has zero reward cuts.
Since then, PewDiePie’s DLive channel has gained over 820,000 followers, which is less than 1% of his YouTube channel exposure. On May 5, PewDiePie’s YouTube channel hit its 10-year anniversary, amassing more 25 billion total views and 104 million subscribers.
PewDiePie outlined that the decision was driven by his live streaming focus in 2020:
“YouTube has been my home for over a decade now and live streaming on the platform feels like a natural fit as I continue to look for new ways to create content and interact with fans worldwide […] Live streaming is something I’m focusing a lot on in 2020 and beyond, so to be able to partner with YouTube and be at the forefront of new product features is special and exciting for the future.”
Cointelegraph reached out to Dlive and PewDiePie for additional queries and will update if we hear back.
PewDiePie leaves DLive after the platform decided to move to Tron
Originally built on the Lino blockchain, DLive reportedly agreed to migrate to the Tron blockchain in late 2019. On Dec. 30, major peer-to-peer file-sharing giant BitTorrent announced that DLive will be joining its ecosystem. At the time, BitTorrent CEO Justin Sun, who is also the founder of Tron, outlined that — following YouTube’s crypto-content ban — decentralized content platforms are the future.
On May 5, Cointelegraph reported on a new decentralized social media project that aims to enable IOTA (MIOTA) node owners to run their own social media sites or apps.
