Wallet-to-wallet messaging — why is that the next web3 big thing?

I roughly classify the giant leaps of blockchain computers in this manner:

1. Bitcoin — the ability to reach consensus with a distributed set of nodes
2. Ethereum — reaching consensus which includes parallel logic execution
3. Rollups — scaling blockchains and separating the consensus and execution layer

I believe the next leap that can change a lot is wallet-to-wallet messaging.

Why?

Blockchains allowed us to have open protocols and DAOs that are built on a fully decentralized infrastructure and are controlled by tokens. We now know ‘who owns what’ and have a mechanism to coordinate, vote and make decisions.

Some examples:

• Decentralized exchange can vote on changing the fee structure, or adding a feature
• NFT investment DAO can vote on what is the next NFT they want to purchase
• DeFi protocol can vote on allocating some tokens for a partnership

Using tokens is an amazing instrument allowing to people over the internet to coordinate, with the efficiency of the internet baked in (24/7, low barriers to entry, reliable). But we have one part missing in the tech stack — messaging.

I think on messaging as moving information around. Obviously we have lots of ways to do that today — Whatsapp, Discord, Telegram — why is that not enough?

Because there isn’t an easy way of connecting between the ownership/ identity you have on chain, and the transfer of general information (which is not financial type).

Things you can’t do right now:

• Notify DAO token holders on the next DAO meeting
• Notify stakeholders on a DeFi protocol hack
• Push notifications to all owners of an NFT series (“only Bored Apes owners get a message x..”)
• Send messages directly to a DAO

Right now in web3 it is your responsibility as an owner to scroll around Discord/Telegram and try to figure out what information is relevant to you and what’s not. We are drowning with information and DAOs really can’t communicate well with token holders.

So we have plenty of ways of transferring information over TCP/IP very effectively, but they cannot effectively reach their destination and serve their purpose of coordination in web3.

What if we can send a message directly to a wallet address? this address can be owned by the DAO, a user, or any entity represented on the blockchain. This can be a great solution to connect blockchain ownership data, and general information data.

DAOs can just lookup all of the token holders addresses and send them a direct message, a web3 user can directly ping that bored ape or crypto punk he has been wanting to talk with, and a DeFi hack will immediacy be notified to all LPs or parties that engage with the protocol.

Obviously this comes with lots of questions:

• How do we prevent spam to a wallet address (same web1 problem with emails)
• Do I *want* anyone to be able to send me messages?
• Do we need a decentralized solution or can we build this ‘the web2 way’
• Costs
• Privacy

There are very early solutions in the market right now. Let’s explore some of them briefly:

XMTP

@xmtp is the most interesting solution right now, backed by some of the strongest backers in web3. Not a lot of technical info on them (still stealthy), but luckily I found an amazing podcast by one of the founders @ShaneMac, I highly recommend listening to (also very inspirational on culture building and startups).

Some information I gathered on the solution being built: It’s going to be a network with nodes (and a token coordinating the network), will support multi chain so you will be able to build messaging services on top and users will be able to subscribe to messaging services. The name XMTP hints us that at least some inspiration was taken from the XMPP classical messaging protocol.

Parallel Messaging Service

During last December @ParallelNFT, an NFT-based sci-fi card game, launched an end-to-end encrypted messaging service for Ethereum wallets called inb0x. To my best understanding this is a centralized messaging service leveraging your Ethereum private key for encryption.

Etherscan chat

The team behind @etherscan also published an Ethereum-based wallet-to-wallet instant messaging service called Blockscan. It enables users to engage in an instant wallet-to-wallet chat, access chats, block spammy addresses, and get notified when a message has been received.

This is also a centralized service, and in terms of user privacy and data storage, Blockscan notes that its information is stored via “global hosting providers” with servers across multiple regions, with inactive data deleted after 24 months.

The most anticipated thing right now is probably @xmtp_ launching their network in the future.

I am really waiting for more network based / decentralized solutions around messaging, and believe it’s going to be a game changer when we will have more functionality around wallet-to-wallet messaging This will unlock many new experiences in web3 waiting to be explored.

Got this far? Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @levin_idan.

And if you’re building something exciting in web3, be sure to DM me and we can grab a coffee.

Idan