All popular messengers are owned by large companies that have access to your correspondence and monetize it. Why not use a decentralized messaging app? Here are the top three blockchain messengers:

• Dust. It is a blockchain-based messenger developed by Radical App. The app has a strong focus on privacy and security and has several features designed to protect your identity. One of the main advantages of Dust is that messages are automatically deleted after a certain amount of time (up to 24 hours). Once a message has been deleted, it cannot be recovered.
• e-Chat. It is one of the most famous blockchain messaging applications currently available. The app is more than just a messenger. Built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, the e-Chat app can also handle Ethereum transactions, and the e-Chat app itself is equipped with a multi-currency crypto wallet. You can also make group calls using e-Chat for up to 10 people for free.
• Sylo. The application is a decentralized messenger with a built-in cryptocurrency wallet. Sylo also places great emphasis on privacy. Every conversation uses decentralized technology to create encrypted connections.

 

How Messengers Work on the Blockchain

A message is a transaction. Everyone is already accustomed to the fact that transactions on the blockchain transfer tokens (coins) from one user to another. To send a message in a messenger on the blockchain, you need to go through several stages:

1. Encrypt message text.
2. Put ciphertext in the transaction.
3. Sign the transaction.
4. Send a transaction to any node on the network.
5. A specially designed nodes system checks the message.
6. If everything is OK – the transaction with the message is included in the next block.
7. The recipient retrieves the transaction with the message and decrypts it.

Steps 1–3 and 7 are performed locally on the client’s side and steps 5–6 are performed on the hosts’. A distributed system of nodes, based on consensus, determines the validity of a message transaction. From whom and to whom, when, whether the message was replaced with another, and whether the sending time is correct. This is a very important advantage of blockchain – there is no central structure in charge of checks, and the sequence of messages and their content cannot be tampered with.

Blockchain messengers are ahead of time but have not yet gained much popularity. Skepticism is associated with the fact that people are not ready to take responsibility for their accounts on themselves, the possession of personal information is not yet in trend, and technologies do not allow providing high speeds on the blockchain. In the future, more technologically advanced analogs of blockchain messengers will appear.