SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Unstoppable Domains, a company onboarding users to the decentralized web, launched a decentralized chat protocol “Dchat” out of Mozilla’s ‘Fix the Internet’ incubator. Dchat integrates with a user’s crypto wallet as well as a peer-to-peer (p2p) network to secure and store chat messages. Unlike traditional chat apps that store messages on their own servers, Dchat is 100% controlled by users.
Messaging privacy has become a flashpoint for consumers as companies are known to read text messages to place advertisements or block messages as part of surveillance programs run by some governments.
“Rather than having Tinder or Facebook read your messages, Dchat enables users to own, encrypt, and store their messages directly,” explained Matthew Gould, co-founder at Unstoppable Domains.
To make matters worse, recent legislation aimed at increasing liability for companies providing chat servers threatens to entirely eliminate a whole class of private messaging apps in the United States. Under the EARN IT Act certain secure messaging platforms, like Signal, may even need to leave the US market entirely, dealing a huge blow to privacy advocates. According to the EFF, who penned a blog post on the upcoming legislation:
“The EARN IT Act could end user privacy as we know it. Tech companies that provide private, encrypted messaging could have to re-write their software to allow police special access to their users’ messages.”
Dchat makes it impossible for companies to spy on or censor their users’ messages because users are the only ones with the ability to view their messages. By using end to end encryption and sending new messages directly from a user’s device to the p2p network, Dchat doesn’t need to worry about the EARN IT Act.
“Privacy is a human right. The way technology works today, we are unable to have private conversations with our friends and families. Decentralized chat is a way to address encroaching surveillance in society, specifically the EARN IT Act. We hope to see others build on and improve on decentralized chat protocols,” added Unstoppable Domains co-founder, Brad Kam.
You can use Dchat now by visiting https://unstoppabledomains.com/chat. Several crypto wallets, including MyEtherWallet and imToken have already committed to supporting Dchat and will be going live in the coming weeks, enabling millions of users an easy way to chat securely.
Unstoppable Domains recently announced their dBlog to provide any .crypto domain holders the ability to quickly build a fully functioning blog. Earlier this year, Unstoppable Domains launched an integration with Opera Browser so that .crypto domains can be typed into the Android App just like a .com domain. To date, thousands of websites have been launched on the decentralized web, and Unstoppable Domains has registered over 200,000 domains.
About Dchat:
User Controlled - Doesn’t matter if apps shut down, get hacked, or users are banned because the users' messages are stored on a p2p network, not the app itself.
Secure - A crypto wallet is required to log in, messages are encrypted and can only be read by the user, applications that use the protocol can’t read users' messages
Shared Inbox - Users see the same contacts/messages in every app that uses the protocol
About Unstoppable Domains:
Unstoppable Domains is a San Francisco-based company onboarding the world to the decentralized web. The company is backed by Draper Associates and Boost VC and has received grants from the Ethereum Foundation and Zilliqa Foundation.
About Mozilla Fix the Internet:
The Mozilla Builders Incubator invests in people, projects, and technologies that shape the internet and have a positive impact without having to only worry about the bottom line. Firefox, Wikipedia, Wordpress, DuckDuckGo, Kickstarter, GitHub, Node.js, Ethereum are some of our favorite examples of the internet at its best.