DLive is outta here, folks! The site CEO Charles Wayn announced in this post made only a few hours ago that DLive is heading for what it sees as being greener pastures:
The major source of income for streamers should be highly dependent on their viewers supporting them through various methods such as tipping, gifting, and subscriptions. Now, it is time to start a new chapter on this journey. On Monday, September 24th at 10:00 am PDT, DLive will be migrating to the Lino blockchain testnet.
First blood has been drawn in what I have coined in advance as the Content Blockchain Wars. Youtube is dead on it's feet without realizing it. The real war is being fought in the shadows, on these apps that have yet to reach mainstream attention. DLive was the Twitch equivalent on the Steem blockchain that for a while now (along with DTube) solidified Steem's position as leader of blockchain content rewards.
One key thing to note is that the anticipated migration is to occur on the 25th, a day before major changes happen to the Steem blockchain. Coincidence? DLive promises that all users who have made accounts on their platform before the 24th can sign up on DLive and receive 100 Lino points.
The Lino blockchain is relatively new, but it seems to work much like Steem does. So why is DLive leaving? In the CEO's words:
We’ve been monitoring analytics and we were not able to reward our content creators with the true value of their content. Our focus was to grow our user base, and build an engaging live streaming and video community while growing Steem as well... However, the current economic model of Steem incentivizes large Steem holders to continuously upvote their own content and other creators who specifically support their content. This creates an ecosystem where a content’s true value can’t be recognized or be fairly rewarded.
Steem's major Achilles heel is coming back to bite it. With this, Lino seems to be proving itself to be a real threat to the Steem blockchain. Another advantage Lino has over Steem are that it has similar mechanisms with an inflationary model, only without the seven day voting window that makes old content literally worthless.
But most importantly of all, the rewards from the pool are distributed automatically based on content consumption as monitored and evaluated by a proprietary algorithm. Someone has been watching Steem closely, and has clearly learned a thing or two.
So what now? Is this the beginning of the end for Steem and Steem apps and sites?
It's too early to tell. Lino is very new, and DLive will be its first app. They've apparently been promised quite a lot of support, something that's probably lacking on the Steem side (given how Steemit Inc is already packed to the max with projects for improving the Steem blockchain late into 2019). But Lino is new and unproven. I'll believe it is what it says it is when the first payments distribute, and not before.
But one thing's for sure. I'm setting up my Lino Dlive account just in case.