Youtube already has that. It's called "Fan funding":

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6052077?hl=en

Wow. That is incredibly half-assed considering how important it should be.

The contrast with twitch's system or with patreon or kickstarter could not be larger.

Out of curiosity, what does Twitch do differently than this?

They have a big sub button, and give streamers tools to modify the experience for subs. You can give them sub only emotes that they can use everywhere, or you could put your chat in sub only mode, or you could make recorded videos that are sub only.

Even that is not coming close to realizing the potential of such crowdfunding, but it beats a random tip button that sometimes doesn't even show up.

well to be fair subscriptions != donations

Twitch doesn't make any money from streamer tips as most of that is done through a link to PayPal. Twitch has no tip system.

Popular streamers like Lirik have said they much prefer getting a subscription through Twitch than a donation as it's much more reliable. Some streamers like Summit1G probably does make way more money through tips because of their personality some people just throw money at them, but again none of that goes to Twitch.

Ehm, twitch has it's own donation system (which works trough paypal) e.g.: https://www.twitchalerts.com/donate/tsm_theoddone (and ofc boobies!) https://www.twitchalerts.com/donate/pink_sparkles

If you use a paypal link they also get the referrer unless you simply post your PP email and make people doit manually, but since the introduction of TA i think that's against the EULA.

Except that https://twitchalerts.com is not affiliated with Twitch, it's unsure if they have a deal to get some of the revenue.

They take 1% of the donations.

Yes, twitchalerts does. Not Twitch.

What do you mean by "ofc boobies" ? Having trouble getting something constructive out of that.

Do not assume PayPal is not kicking back a % of donations to Twitch. PayPal does this for e-commerce platforms that make PayPal integrations easy. For some e-commerce platforms this hidden cut of PayPal's transaction is their largest revenue stream.

They don't make it easy, broadcasters just add a link in their profile. There's no information transmitted to PayPal about the donation being for Twitch broadcasting. In fact a lot of broadcaster use third party tools, tools not made by Twitch or PayPal, for the donation system so that it updates in their stream and chat.