Interest in decentralized blockchain-based messaging and social media apps surged last year amid civil wars and communications blackouts in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
According to Exploding Topics, search interest in decentralized social media has increased by 145% over the past five years, and decentralized peer-to-peer messaging service Bitchat has seen a spike in downloads in recent months during protests in Madagascar, Uganda, Nepal, Indonesia, and Iran.
Search interest in decentralized social media has skyrocketed over the past five years. sauce: explosive topics
“I think people are starting to trust open protocols more than closed companies,” XMTP Labs CEO Shane Mack told Cointelegraph in a recent interview.
XMTP Labs is a startup focused on building decentralized communications technology. Mack said that with the growing anxiety around the world, people need to explore decentralized messaging options and think more about privacy.
In February, the messaging app WhatsApp, owned by social media giant Meta, announced that Russia had moved forward with blocking the app, making it inaccessible without workarounds such as VPNs.
“The last 15 years have been centralized, the next 15 years will be decentralized. When you see an entire country taking down one app, you know you need to build a new foundation on top of that,” Mac added.
“Open source is having a great moment: open protocols, open financial systems, open communication protocols, open identity standards. When decentralization and open standards come back, it’s going to be a really great next era for the internet.”
No single point of failure
Mack said distributed networks can provide a safe haven during disruptions because they are typically difficult to shut down without a single point of failure.
Decentralized platforms are typically hosted on networks spanning multiple countries, with servers managed by participants.
By comparison, centralized options run on a single collection of servers controlled by one entity or company, so they can be more easily blocked and taken offline.
He added that technology is getting better and better as developers and users push the limits.
“Someone took the open source Bitchat client and built an XMTP network into it because the app was shut down in their country. The mesh network and the decentralized network connection means the app is no longer a single point of failure,” Mack said.
Decentralized messengers will not replace the old guard
Market research firm 360 Research Reports predicted in a March 2 report that the blockchain messaging market will grow significantly in the coming years, with factors such as global demand for increased privacy and security in communications driving growth.
However, despite increased user interest, centralized platforms remain popular and will likely operate in parallel with decentralized platforms, Mack said. To maintain this momentum, developers need to step up and continue to innovate.
According to research from Explosion Topics, social media users currently split their time between an average of 6.75 social media platforms per month.
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“I don’t think it ends up killing things,” Mack said of centralized messengers. “We built a new platform. SMS and email didn’t disappear to build encrypted messaging. We don’t know if they will.”
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