YouNow Will Give Select Creators $5 Million In Cryptocurrency To Seed New ‘Rize’ App

In order to kickstart the launch of its new cryptocurrency-based app Rize, YouNow will distribute a total of $5 million in Props — which is the name of the digital currency that will be tendered across the platform — to select creators with sizable followings.

Hailing from YouNow as well as competing platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, and Instagram, creators receiving the initial tokens — as part of Rize’s so-called Community Rewards Program — include digital musicians Emma McGann (pictured above) and Brent Morgan, as well as online personality Rudan Custodio. All told, McGann, Morgan, and Custodio count 48 million views on YouNow to date. The courtesy Props tokens will be distributed in proportion to the size of each creator’s following.

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Other creators with large audiences off of YouNow will be eligible to receive bonus tokens, but only when they purchase Props during an initial coin offering (ICO) slated for next month. Those with 10,000,000 followers, for instance, will receive a 40% token bonus, according to a company blog post, while those with 500,000 followers will receive a 20% bonus, and those with 50,000 followers will receive a 12% bonus. Interested parties can submit their channels for consideration right here.

“Investing time into building your social networks with no return will be a thing of the past,” McGann said of Rize — which YouNow calls the first decentralized streaming video platform. “With Props, we creators have a personal stake in the platform we actually helped build.”

That’s because as opposed to traditional video platforms, which take a substantial cut of revenues, Rize will enable creators, developers, and viewers all to receive Props — equitably and transparently — for contributing to the betterment of the app in some way. For instance, a broadcaster might earn Props by hosting a lively group chat, or a developer could earn tokens for designing a new feature.

YouNow said it will launch Rize with 1 billion total Props — half of which will go the Props Foundation, a newly-formed nonprofit that will determine how rewards are distributed. Additionally, 30% of all Props will be reserved for company executives and advisers, while 20% will be allocated for public sale.