Today, we’re excited to announce the next evolution in Push Protocol: Push Chat!
Push Chat is a wallet-to-wallet communication protocol that will accelerate the growth and value of web3 applications and communities alike. We are launching the Push Chat alpha and opening up access to select users across the Push community. To learn how to get access to the alpha, see “Push Chat Alpha Access” below.
The TL;DR about Push Chat
The Push Chat alpha allows anyone with a wallet or an ENS to chat with others directly through the Push Chat application (app.push.org). Text, GIFs, and images are supported in the alpha. With a couple of web3 steps added in, Push Chat operates just like a typical messaging application — just web3-native. Features to be added down the road include video, group chat, payments, transfers, live chat, and more.
Polygon Wallet is a launch partner for Push Chat, setting the stage for the intra-wallet chat that allows users to stay entirely within their wallets to communicate instead of jumping in between applications.
Push Chat Alpha Access
Starting today, October 10, access to the Push Chat alpha is available to the following individuals. (If you’re not part of these groups, don’t sweat! We’ll be rolling out more alpha access to the communities in the weeks to come, and the full public launch isn’t too far behind 🙂).
- ETH Bogota Hackers. If you were a developer who hacked with Push Protocol during ETH Bogota this year, come try out the alpha! More information is in the Push Discord.
- Alpha POAP Holders. If you have a POAP from the Push team handed out in Bogota, you can access the alpha. Come find the Push team at Devcon (Push has a booth on Day 3 & 4 of Devcon!) and other events in Bogota and ask for a POAP.
If you are part of the Push Chat alpha, your feedback will be important to the success of the app when it goes public. Join our Discord and leave your thoughts and feedback in the #push-chat-alpha channel.
If you don’t join the Push Chat alpha — no worries! The public app will be available soon — stay tuned.
From Notifications to Chat (and Beyond): The Push Journey
In 2020, we launched as Ethereum Push Notification Service (EPNS) to bring to market a clear and valuable product: push notifications on Ethereum. Push notifications are a core component of the daily user experience in web2. Much of our daily interaction with apps, services, and one another is prompted with push notifications. Since launching on mainnet in early 2022, Push Protocol has powered over 18 million notifications across 100 channels to nearly 60k subscribers.
The next frontier, we knew, was another core component of the daily user experience in web2: messaging. Even more than push notifications, global peer-to-peer digital communication has become a cornerstone of our society. Our reliance on web2 chat applications, however, has a long history of privacy concerns, data exploitation, censorship, human rights concerns, and poor user experience.
We knew that messaging would eventually find its home in web3 not as a feature, but as a fundamental building block for decentralized infrastructure. We started working to bring the lessons and the success from building push notifications into the next primitive of blockchain applications: chat.
Push Protocol: A Rebrand for the Future
Before we could launch Push Chat, we had to deal with the fact that much of our market branding to date has focused on push notifications. Not just that, but push notifications on Ethereum. If we wished to move beyond push notifications to include chat, we also knew that chat would need to be available to any web3 user, no matter which blockchain their app operated on.
So, in September 2022, EPNS announced its rebrand to Push Protocol! Push is the multi-chain communication platform of web3. It powers any type of communication on any decentralized network, helping to better connect apps, services, developers, and users. And our rebrand wasn’t just for kicks. Two days after the rebrand, we announced that Push Protocol was live on Polygon’s mainnet, capable of powering notifications for the thousands of apps and hundreds of thousands of active users.
With new branding that nods to our roots, we are pushing forward the future of web3 with robust, decentralized, and user-friendly communication for all.
The Vision for Push Chat
Crypto has been on “single player mode.” By that, we mean that interaction has largely been single-direction. Apps communicate through monolithic communication methods. When communities do come together to talk to one another, they are forced to do so outside of the technology stack they are so passionate about.
And yet…the crypto market has seen unparalleled growth, driven by the sheer devotion that users have to the technology and their willingness to put up with an imperfect user experience. What if we unlock “multiplayer” mode in web3, and enable all the players of today’s and tomorrow’s ecosystem to communicate with each other directly with the technology they’re building? The growth that will spark is parabolic.
Expressive, “multi-player,” web3-native experiences have been missing. When we bring chat and communication into the web3 stack, we begin to unlock composability and capabilities that have been impossible today unless web2 chat platforms have elected to build web3-compatible features.
The opportunity of Push Chat for developers will be to build better communication systems embedded into users’ everyday applications. Chatbots to automate communication and customer support. DAO communications to members and amongst members; including governance discussions. Wallet developers in particular have blank space to start integrating communication directly into user wallets, unlocking an entirely new paradigm for the way in which we use our wallets on a daily basis.
But, we don’t believe chat is just a feature. It is a core piece of the infrastructure of the decentralized internet, enabling any person, service, or app to communicate with others without barriers or borders. Our vision is for Push Chat to power every form of communication that occurs on the new internet that is being built. It’s a lofty vision, but one we’re excited to build with our community.
Looking Ahead
Push Chat is the next evolution in web3-native communication. Push Protocol has spent 2 years building the most widely-adopted push notification service in web3. With Push Chat, we are delivering on our promise to create the most useful, adopted, and user-friendly communication protocol for web3. Join us 🔔👋
Try the Push Chat alpha: http://app.push.org/Learn more: http://push.org/