Remember those iphone ads splattered around cities over the past few years? With phrases like “Privacy is king,” “What happens on your iphone stays on your iphone,” and the highly straightforward and pithy “Your data is being $old!,” – they felt like cultural successors to Apple’s 1984 campaign and a harbinger of crypto’s relevancy in the digital messaging space. 

For as long as the internet’s been around we've been trying to keep private content…private. Different companies and apps have touted their security features and encryption methodologies, but at the end of the day, these apps are centralized and owned by corporations who may have different values than you and your community. You’re either onchain or there’s an intermediary that has some potential vantage point into your data/content/conversations. Maybe they’ll look at your messages, maybe they’ll de-platform you. It’s a risk we take for the sake of convenience, familiarity, and ease of use. 

Trust and the open internet

We had all this potential that was unlocked when phones became connected. We’ve got cameras, screens, and access to almost everyone. And it’s all in our pockets. So why don’t we actually feel connected? Why aren’t we fully engaged? What’s capping our social interactions online? What’s missing? We think it’s trust. 

There are apps and messaging spaces online where the general consensus is that they’re trusted and encrypted, but they’re 1:1 messaging spaces like Whatsapp and Signal. But the fun stuff– the communities, the games, the news, the friend groups– the internet’s connective tissues– aren’t built to be inherently trustworthy. So where do we turn when we want to show up as ourselves, hang out, and stay informed without intermediaries and without the risk of being de-platformed?

Web3 has entered the chat...

What if we hand over the reins and give sovereignty to communities to decide who can read and write and lay out their own rules of engagement? And identify ownership and solicit contributions in a way that’s front and center? What happens when we replace traditional intermediaries with smart contracts, ensuring equitable governance and economic distribution? When communities are brought into onchain messaging apps, with a new, trust-centric model of digital engagement, we think we’ll see a future where online communities operate with unprecedented integrity and fairness. This decentralized approach not only reduces the risk of fraud and manipulation but also democratizes control, empowering users to have a direct say in the operations and future of their communities. 

Growing internet gardens

When communities operate without intermediaries and have their own oversight and control over their digital spaces, we think we’ll see a bent toward accountability and longevity. We’ll move away from a tragedy of the commons situation where incentives are misaligned, toward a system where communities are materially rewarded for tending to their growth. When you wholly own something, you tend to care for it and nurture the space. In the case of online communities, this means you’ll have a much more conscious product of collective conversation. Onchain, we can create a platform where trust is part of every interaction, enhancing security, privacy, and community building. The result is something of lasting value for the communities involved. And hopefully far fewer billboards that stoke fear in our online behaviors.