The future of online communication: Secure and censorship-resistant chat on blockchain

Centralized instant messaging apps are plagued with censorship, outages and data security concerns. Here’s how decentralization can help.

Communication remains a basic necessity no matter how much humanity moves forward. The digital era has brought a myriad of online tools that bring people together, and it was a rather swift transition from postcards to Discord groups.

Instant messaging applications with social elements, such as Slack, Discord or WhatsApp, operate as communication enablers for hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Both individuals and businesses utilize the rich features and ease of use found in such applications.

However, as the power of communication becomes more concentrated under the hands of a few centralized services, a certain set of concerns arise:

• Privacy and data security: Centralized platforms store user data on servers controlled by a single entity, making them attractive targets for hackers and raising concerns about how these companies use the data for advertising or other purposes.
• Censorship: Centralized entities can censor or moderate content according to their policies or external pressures, leading to arbitrary removal of content or entire communities.
• Service outages: Centralization means that every user is affected if the service’s servers go down. This creates a single point of failure.
• Monetization and advertisements: Centralized platforms may prioritize profit over user experience, leading to invasive advertising or selling user data to third parties.

How decentralization can improve digital communication

Decentralized networks offer solutions to the biggest pain points of the Web2-era communication. Blockchain-based decentralization can potentially enhance privacy and security by distributing data across numerous points on the network, making it harder for unauthorized parties to access or compromise user information.

Without a centralized entity controlling the communication network, censorship and outage risks can be minimized. Thanks to the user-centric nature of Web3, it’s also easier to enable new monetization models that empower participants.

The concept of a decentralized application (DApp) for instant messaging grew quickly over the years, giving birth to several examples. However, providing on-chain communication with Web2-like features is easier said than done. Most DApps that attempt to offer Web2-like features encounter significant hurdles.

While decentralization enhances privacy and reduces censorship, it often comes at the cost of performance and user experience. For instance, achieving real-time communication — which is critical for user satisfaction in messaging apps — is more complex on a decentralized network due to increased latency and inconsistent data synchronization across nodes.

Furthermore, most DApps compromise by handling user-facing, front-end features off-chain to maintain performance. This approach dilutes the principles of decentralization and limits the functionality and scalability of these applications. As a result, while DApps represent a promising frontier in digital communication, their current implementations are often incomplete and do not fully harness the advantages of blockchain technology.

Fully on-chain communication at scale

OpenChat, a crypto messaging platform, aims to herald a new era in digital communication, leveraging the power of blockchain technology to deliver a unique, decentralized chatting experience. The platform promises enhanced security and autonomy for users, positioning them prominently in the development of Web3 and making it a relevant choice for those interested in the future of online interaction. OpenChat is running digital communication end-to-end — including front-end — on the Internet Computer (ICP).

OpenChat is made possible by ICP, a blockchain network designed to expand the functionalities of the internet, offering a platform for smart contracts and DApps to run at web speed directly on the blockchain. ICP’s unique infrastructure aims to unlock the full potential of DApps, helping them perform at traditional Web2 speeds while keeping the whole process on the blockchain.

OpenChat provides Discord-like servers in a decentralized environment. Source: OpenChat

Running on ICP makes it possible for OpenChat to offer the same performance and feature set as Discord or Slack while providing full benefits of decentralization, including data security, reliability and censorship resistance. On top of traditional chat features, OpenChat is also equipped with crypto-native functionality, allowing users to send and receive tokens as chat messages and swap tokens either through integrations with exchanges or in a peer-to-peer fashion.

The communication DApp has recently introduced video and voice chat support, with the initial launch including one-to-one video calls in direct chats and group video calls of up to twenty people in private chats. OpenChat’s phase two will target community broadcasts.

Web3 chat app governed by its users

The idea of decentralization and end-to-end on-chain communication offered by OpenChat has received a warm welcome from the ICP ecosystem. The project raised over 1 million ICP (worth $5.5 million at the time of fundraising) in five hours in March 2023 to become a fully functional decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) led by its community of shareholders.

As part of the ICP ecosystem, OpenChat is now controlled by a DAO and uses CHAT as its governance token. CHAT tokenholders will be able to govern the platform and make their voices heard regarding the future of OpenChat, Matt Grogan, co-founder of OpenChat, said at the time.

OpenChat also offers a video chat feature. Source: OpenChat

In August, after the successful transition into a DAO, OpenChat enabled users to create Communities — servers with a Discord-meets-Slack style that enables group admins to create subgroups for more focused conversations. Users can find communities based on common interests or create their own. OpenChat co-founder Julian Jelfs shared plans to enable the OpenChat Communities feature for projects to integrate as a communication tool on their own websites.

The roadmap for decentralized communication

One of the primary goals of the DApp is to introduce end-to-end encryption for chats in 2024 to offer superior security and privacy. The roadmap of OpenChat also includes a sophisticated tokenization system to reward users for posting key content with CHAT tokens. The development team is fully pledged to keep pace with major Web2 competitors and lead innovation in Web3, meaning the feature set of OpenChat will evolve and expand as digital communication advances.

OpenChat will be featured in the upcoming global ICPCC event on May 10, which will showcase how ICP technology can enhance decentralized applications on any blockchain.

Fully decentralized platforms like OpenChat aim to address the privacy, security and centralization challenges by offering enhanced privacy, reduced censorship and a user-governed ecosystem. It promises to safeguard user data and empower users through community-led governance and innovative monetization strategies planned for the future.