Decentralized, blockchain-based messaging and social media apps saw a surge of interest over the past year amid civil unrest and communication disruptions in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
According to Exploding Topics, search interest in decentralized social media has grown 145% over the past five years, while decentralized peer-to-peer messaging service Bitchat saw a spike in downloads in recent months amid protests in Madagascar, Uganda, Nepal, Indonesia and Iran.
Search interest in decentralized social media has increased dramatically over the past five years. Source: Exploding topics
“I think people are starting to trust open protocols more than closed companies,” Shane Mac, the CEO of XMTP Labs, told Cointelegraph in a recent interview.
XMTP Labs is a startup focused on building decentralized communications technology. Mac said unrest around the world is prompting people to explore decentralized messaging options and think more about privacy.
Social media giant Meta’s messaging app WhatsApp said in February that Russia had made progress on blocking the app, making it inaccessible without a VPN or a similar solution.
“The last fifteen years have been centralized and the next fifteen years will be decentralized. When you see an entire country shutting down individual apps, that tells you there needs to be a new foundation to build on,” Mac added.
“Open source is having a moment. Open protocols, open financial systems, open communications protocols, open identity standards. It’s going to be a really cool next era of the Internet when decentralization and open standards come back.”
No point of failure
Mac said decentralized networks can provide a safe haven during unrest because they are typically harder to shut down without a single point of failure.
Decentralized platforms are generally hosted on networks spanning multiple countries, with the servers managed by the participants.
By comparison, centralized options run on a single collection of servers controlled by a single entity or company, and are easier to block and take offline.
He added that the technology will only get better as developers and users push the boundaries.
“Someone took the open source Bitchat client and put the XMTP network in it because they had shut down their app in their country. The connection of mesh networks and decentralized networks made the app no longer the single point of failure,” Mac said.
Decentralized messengers will not replace the old guard
Market researcher 360 Research Reports predicted in a March 2 report that the blockchain messaging market will grow significantly in the coming years, with key drivers such as global demand for improved privacy and security in communications fueling growth.
However, despite increasing user interest, Mac says centralized platforms will likely remain popular and operate alongside decentralized alternatives. Developers will have to step up and continue to innovate to maintain that momentum.
Exploding Topics found that social media users now spread their time across an average of 6.75 social media platforms per month.
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“I don’t think it will ultimately kill things; you’ve built a new platform. SMS and email haven’t died to build encrypted messages; I don’t know if they’ll go away,” Mac said, referring to centralized messengers.
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