Joystream Raises $5.85M in Funding to Reach Total Valuation of $60M

Joystream, the decentralized video platform powered by blockchain announced that it has raised $5.85 million in its last funding round. This brings the company’s total valuation at $60 million and its total funded amount to $13 million. Joystream is on a mission to empower individual artists, unlike other mainstream mediums that favor corporations. It wants to establish a decentralized YouTube-like platform for creators and give them full control over their content and its distribution, curation, discovery, and monetization.

Joystream is aware of the hold digital media has over the changing world and the multiple issues plaguing the free expression and reach of such content such as monetization restrictions, censorship, profit inequity, inadequate platform innovation and absence of credibility when it comes to third-party developers. It wants to change this arrangement using the power of blockchain.

Joystream Funding Round

According to the information provided by Joystream, some of the investors at the funding round comprised Defi Alliance, Hyperspehere, D1 Ventures and Digital Currency Group. These four investors together led the round while some others included Signum Capital, Genblock Capital, Polkadotters, LD Capital, BITMAIN (seed round) and OKX Blockdream Ventures, etc.

In an interview with CoinDesk, the company’s Chief Marketing Officer Robert Neckelius stated the blockchain-based firm would use the fund proceeds for staff hiring while keeping about $12 million for incentives in the form of JOY tokens. Joystream’s founder Behedo Mender confirmed Neckelius’ statements and said that the recruits would be hired keeping in mind the critical areas that need to be enhanced for a successful Q2 mainnet launch. Some of the activities related to the launch will be the kicking off of the YouTube creator partnership program, DAO community growth initiatives ramp up and delivery of key product features.

Joystream: the Digital Creator Platform

Headquartered in Norway, Joystream was founded in 2015 by Behedo Mender. Its goal is to establish an ecosystem where content-creating/media platforms assume accountability towards the people they impact, their users and not just owners. Atlas and Pioneer are two of Joystream’s rapidly developing apps for content consumption and governance activities. Currently, the application empowers creators to mint NFTs through their videos while giving each channel an individual native token. When consumers of a particular creator invest in their product, they are eligible to enjoy the profits from the sale of NFTs as well as partake in other monetary successes of the creator.

The company’s planned DAO i.e. Decentralized Autonomous Organization would give creators full control over the various operational as well as monetary aspects unlike the protocols set by companies like YouTube. Joystream is planning to launch a mainnet this year and currently has 3434 memberships on its testnet with about $132,301 already paid out to the creators.