WalletChat — The future of web3 communication?
The way we currently use messaging across the web is broken. I have a separate account on WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, Twitter, Discord, and countless other messaging apps. Not only these don’t communicate with one another, but also my chat histories and contacts are siloed and non-transferrable, whenever I switch apps.
Web3 can solve all of this, once we have built open communication standards between wallets. But let’s start with the most basic building block and let’s imagine a product that’s ready and easy to use — a simple wallet-to-wallet chat application.
The concept is very simple — you log in with your (Metamask) wallet, and you can instantly message any other wallet owner, using their wallet address or ENS. No third-party identifiers are needed and everything links back to your wallet — which is becoming everyone’s one true source of identity, in web3.
Why should you care?
Good question, glad you asked.
1. Maybe you are browsing an NFT on Opensea and you want to contact the owner to discuss a trade, but there is no way to trace them. How do you get in touch? WalletChat, using just their wallet address.
2. Maybe you simply want to verify that someone is the owner of a certain wallet. Right now, the best way of doing so is to have them sign a message, which is not a great user experience and prone to countless fraud. Discord makes you do this whenever you wish to join owner-gated chats inside a server, to many people’s dismay and sometimes at a great cost of signing a message that give scammers control over your NFTs. In WalletChat, a community manager could simply message all NFT holders an access code, right inside their wallet. No contract signing required.
3. Maybe you are a community admin running incentivised giveaways, just like our partners at Salty Sharks. Having everyone complete an action on-chain, jump inside discord, and drop their wallet address inside a shared channel is not a great workflow. Communicate with the admin wallet directly inside WalletChat, instead?
4. Maybe you are a small DAO currently running inside a Telegram group. It kind of works, but you are having trouble token-gating your group, without complicated workarounds. Maybe you are a bigger DAO and keep thinking how annoying it is that there is no connection between discord and snapshot, which are powered by two different sets of identities. How much could the user experience be streamlined, and how much more functionality could be unlocked if you could sign into these chat spaces with your wallet?
5. Maybe you just want to anonymously message someone, without any link to your email, phone number, or other web 2.0 identifiers?
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Ok, let’s take a step back
At WalletChat we believe that native web3-enabled communication tools are going to replace Telegram, Twitter, and Discord eventually. However, we have to start small.
In its current beta, with wallet sign-in, direct messages, community chats, and a handy browser extension that makes it easy to join discussion rooms of the project you are browsing on Opensea, or direct message the owner of the NFT you are viewing, we have supplied the initial ingredients for this kind of future to start to take shape.
We don’t have a crystal ball and we can’t be sure which of these use cases (or perhaps a completely different one?) will take off first, and that’s where we need your help. What can you do to help us make this happen?
We need YOU now
Leave a comment on this article, sharing your thoughts. Do you agree with the use cases we outline here? Have you got a better one in mind? Which of these problems do you find the most pressing, in your own web3 life? Hop into our discord and tell us directly. Also, check out our web app (still in beta!), play around, and tell us why it’s rubbish (or awesome! 😜)
Web3 messaging is knocking at your door. Join the revolution with WalletChat, now!
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