The news was revealed by YouTube on May 4, with PewDiePie asserting that the contract was a “natural fit.” PewDiePie, in April 2019, had inked collaboration with Dlive, a content sharing platform powered by blockchain.
While acknowledging that DLive treated him “like a real partner,” he pointed that the platform has no cut in rewards.
In a matter of few months, PewDiePie’s channel garnered more than 820,000 subscribers, less than 1% of his YouTube followers.
With over 25 billion total views and 104 million subscribers, PewDiePie’s channel celebrated its 10th anniversary on May 5.
PewDiePie clarified that he took the decision to work with YouTube on the basis of his focus on live streaming 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.”
DLive, initially hosted on the Lino blockchain, accepted to shift to the Tron blockchain in the last leg of 2019.
On December 30, 2019, popular p2p (peer-to-peer) file-sharing platform BitTorrent revealed that DLive will become a part of its ecosystem.
Founder of Tron blockchain and BitTorrent’s CEO, Justin Sun, at that time, stressed that decentralized content sharing platforms will gain prominence in the future as YouTube continues to act against videos related to cryptocurrency content.
Notably, Society2, a unique decentralized social media (DeSM) project, intends to facilitate IOTA (MIOTA) node owners to operate their apps or social media platforms.