Blockchain has its own involvement with every sector that has to do with humankind. Financial institutions are just the starting point of blockchains. Over the last ten years, internet users have been able to transact with each other in a trustless way with blockchain. This innovation is a groundbreaking one. It allows a censorship resistant application.
Since the re-launch of Bitchat, many questions have arisen on “why store chat messages on a blockchain”. Most especially chats that are just plain text and public on the ledger. This way looks absurd to laypersons but if it is analyzed critically beyond a layman’s point of view, the issues with the existing chats and social media interactions generally would come to light.
A blockchain is just a database of its at its core. Blockchain database has a peculiar set of properties which makes it very useful for decentralized applications. Single public ledger with minute fee to transact has never existed. Humans haven’t been able to understand the use or if it makes sense.
Transacting through an open social protocol along a public ledger helps solve fundamental issues with development of applications and integrations. If an application wants to interact with another, the developers of each application must first of all communicate with each other to lay out and design the integration before they start to execute.
With the data on-chain through a documented protocol, this step is completely eluded. The developers can apply the protocol quickly without unnecessary administration thereby hastening innovation. Bit hat, Nitro, Blockpost and Retrofeed have implemented this chat messaging protocol in a short amount of time.
So back to the main question:
Why Put Chat On Chain?
Decentralization
Bitcoin’s most intriguing fact is that it has no CEO. No one is in charge of it. The software is governed by networks which run on a wide array of hardware on millions of devices all over the world. It is exactly what gives Bitcoin its remarkable strength since it is a people’a currency. It utilizes Proof-of-Work which is a consensus mechanism which verifies transactions on the network making use of computing resources of the nodes that run Bitcoin’s software.
Censorship Resistance
Another big concern is censorship. This has to do with tailoring a privacy focused blockchain based chat application. In countries like Saudi Arabia and China, there is an infamous history of the government curbing their citizens’ use of social media platforms in order to avoid opposition. This is where blockchains are useful because in order to stop people from using blockchains, then there would be a complete stop of the public internet which is indeed very hard to achieve even for an authoritarian regime. If a lot of applications are writing messages to the public ledger then no dingy server can censor anyone. The power of moderation would still be there but they can no longer unilaterally shut anyone up.
Immutability
Blockchains are very useful to chat applications because of their immutability. This is the ability of it being susceptible to change. It is unchangeable over time. In order to modify an entry that was formerly attached to blockchain, it requires an enormous amount of computing power. Data Integrity startups like Factom which offers use of this fact solutions to corporations to make sure that their databases are authentic and have not been modified in any way at all.
The Obsidian Platform
The Obsidian Platform makes use of a custom version of the Stratis technology stack to power private and secure messaging applications which offers end-to-end encryption with a privacy focused feature like timed auto-deleting of messages transfer also with no metadata collection. Since Obsidian Platform holds the Stratis blockchain, it is more resistant to censorship compared to other existing messaging applications like WhatsApp and Telegram which were banned by China early this year. Users of both these services rely on the trusted middleman to not input any malicious code into the application. But with blockchain, there is provision for a new unique mechanism to distribute that trust all through the entire network who utilized the application.
The Status Network
The Mobile Ethereum Operating System, Status, is king when it has to do with blockchain based chat apps. Status’ most important goal is to give users more control over their personal information. It offers encrypted messaging, a built-in wallet and a browser for Decentralized Applications which would be running on the Ethereum blockchain. Status being the king of blockchain based messaging platforms was over $780 million in market capitalization compared to Obsidian which was $10 million as of 2018. Obsidian offers more privacy related features to Statuses end-to-end encryption, anonymous user registration and also economic incentives. Status is working similarly to a corporation and has a roadmap set in place for further development
