Via open-sourced standards, a group of Solana blockchain-based systems is aiming to standardize crypto messaging in the hopes of breaking the data silos that exist across different projects and chains.
The “Open Chat Alliance” was launched on Tuesday with support from 19 Solana projects, such as Notifi Network, a messaging network, Bonfida, a supplier of Solana Name Services (SNS), and Only1, a social media site powered by non-fungible tokens (NFTs). They want to develop a standard for managing crypto-based communication that can spread throughout the industry and be transparent and accessible.
The alliance is aiming to come up with a solution to what Notifi CEO Paul Kim calls as the “wallet gardens” issue in cryptocurrency. Users are not able to freely communicate with one another after they join a protocol or project’s community, Kim told CoinDesk. Silos of communication are produced when people are linked to a single platform and identity, he also claimed.
The fact that it is accessible, interoperable, and open source, “[goes] against the entire concept of Web3,” according to Kim.
Crypto projects have attempted to topple these barriers before. Chainlink, a data service, has its own cross-chain technology, and the Cosmos ecosystem as a whole is based on the concept of “inter-blockchain communications.”
The 3 projects that make up the alliance have so far collaborated with 19, mostly NFT and DeFi-related projects, in the Solana ecosystem. According to Kim, there are further projects in the works.
The alliance claims that despite the technical gaps between blockchains, it will establish a communications standard that projects on many chains can use. Theoretically, a user of Solana could easily send a message to a user of Ethereum thanks to an interoperable standard.
There is rarely any agreement on communications systems, not even in Solana. Dialect, a rival with its own communications standards, has openly engaged with a number of protocols in the industry, highlighting the difficulty any one self-described “standard” confronts in gaining widespread acceptance.
According to Leon Lee, Founder and CEO of Only1, users of the GameFi and NFT dapps can easily communicate with one another without being constrained by different protocols, wallets, or chains as an example of the alliance’s structure.
Kim also said, “You’re using your wallet as your kind of passport. And that passport has data on what you have and don’t have in your assets.”
Cross-chain communications technology, however, hasn’t always been secure from cybercriminals.
Because a message transmitted between chains sparked the $600 million Poly Network hack last August, worries over protocol interoperability arose. As seen by the $200 million Nomad vulnerability earlier this month and the $625 million Ronin hack in April, these “bridges” are frequently targeted.
Kim claims that this is the reason the Open Chat Alliance’s structure is limited to messaging.
As a user, you can subscribe to a variety of features, and depending on the feature you utilize, there are various security methods, added Kim. But in the end, individuals are only communicating and not truly participating in any of the transactions.
CyberConnect, a social data platform, also plans to use the messaging system. CyberConnect CEO Shiyu Zhang stated that users would be able to send messages in addition to viewing their friends’ profiles.
Realy, a Solana-based metaverse is eager to include the infrastructure for Web3 users to communicate with one another beyond their network. Because “Web3 is an open and connected network,” according to George Yang, CEO of Realy, an interoperable messaging platform would enable better collaboration across initiatives.
