Pewdiepie has always been vastly different from mainstream artists. Even the people who do not particularly enjoy his brand of content often applaud his struggles against the mainstream and how he has made it to the top of the YouTube platform against all odds. He has always stood for free speech, bashed needlessly sensitive PC culture and stood for small content creators and channel in his career. That’s why his latest deal with the blockchain based video streaming platform D-Live may come off as a little surprise to many.

D-Live, advertised as “world’s first and largest streaming platform on the blockchain” was launched two years back. The basic difference between traditional streaming services like Twitch and D-Live is that D-Live is not operated centrally. D-Live is based on Lino Network Blockchain and unlike twitch or YouTube which takes almost 50% of ad revenue from the content creators, the revenue is distributed among viewers and content creators. You can even earn money as a viewer for your engagement with your favorite streamer.

A far cry from YouTube’s and Twitch’s numbers, Content Creators get up to 90.1 percent of each donation or subscription while the rest of the donation funds rewards for people engaging with the platforms in the form of Lino points–the blockchain’s cryptocurrency. The users are paid in Lino points, currently, about 83.33 Lino points make up a dollar. The current donation pool for Pewdiepie’s channel is at 3,378,973 Lino points which is equivalent to $40,547.68 USD at the moment of writing. His D-Live account already has amassed 180k viewers.

This has way bigger connotations than just a few more ears for blockchain technology. Pewdiepie has been left increasingly frustrated by YouTube’s behaviors as of late where his videos were de-monitzed by YouTube for not being “family friendly”—the label which is completely subjective to people. When people are at mercy of a big corporation to serve as a platform to bridge them with their favorite creators and the platform is operated by for-profit organizations, there will always be an incentive for them to not act for either of the parties(creators and audience) and pursue their own self-interest.

With decentralized applications (DApps), there is an incentive for everybody. Even the viewers are rewarded for their involvement with their favorite creators and the platforms and there is a room for healthy competition between individuals and groups to compete to serve as a bridge between content creators and advertisers.

Nobody could have brought awareness about this evolving technology more than Pewdiepie–in a way, this is a perfect marriage between what the blockchain technology stands for and Pewdiepie’s philosophical stance on the content ecosystem. After all, he better than anybody will understand when the tranquility of hard-made business is disturbed when jealous parties try blatant defamation. Maker’s Studio–one of Disney’s sister advertisement company decided to part ways with him after Wall Street Journal made a baseless news article accusing him of being an anti-semi after he cracked a harmless joke in one of his videos.

This agreement is manna for blockchain and dapps community as it will put the crypto community in exact light as it should be put in and hopefully it will bring positive enthusiasm among Pewdiepie’s 9-year-old army.