Decentralized, blockchain-based messaging and social media apps attracted increased interest over the last year as civil unrest and communication blackouts affected parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Search interest in decentralized social media has climbed about 145% over five years, and peer-to-peer messaging app Bitchat recorded download spikes during protests in Madagascar, Uganda, Nepal, Indonesia and Iran.
“I think people are starting to trust open protocols more than they trust closed companies,” Shane Mac, CEO of XMTP Labs, told Cointelegraph. XMTP Labs builds decentralized communication technology, and Mac said global turmoil is driving people to explore decentralized messaging and rethink privacy.
WhatsApp, owned by Meta, said in February that Russia had moved forward with measures that make the app inaccessible without a VPN or other workarounds. “The last 15 years have been centralized, and the next 15 are going to decentralize. When you see an entire country shut down single apps, it tells you that there has to be a new foundation that we need to go build on,” Mac added.
“Open source is having a moment. Open protocols, open financial systems, open communication protocols, open identity standards. It’s going to be a really cool next era of the internet as decentralization and open standards come back.”
No single point of failure
Mac argued decentralized networks offer a safer option during instability because they lack a single point of failure. Such platforms are typically distributed across networks spanning multiple countries, with infrastructure run by participants, making them harder to block than centralized services, which rely on servers controlled by one entity.
Developers are also combining technologies to improve resilience. Mac noted that an open-source Bitchat client was modified to use the XMTP network after being shut down in a country, and pairing mesh networks with decentralized protocols removed the app as a single chokepoint.
Decentralized messengers won’t replace the old guard
Market researcher 360 Research Reports predicted significant growth in the blockchain messaging market in the coming years, driven by demand for improved privacy and security. Still, Mac expects centralized platforms to remain widely used alongside decentralized alternatives, and he urged continued innovation from developers to maintain momentum.
Users now split their attention across an average of 6.75 social platforms per month, according to Exploding Topics. “I don’t think it will end up killing things; you built a new platform. SMS and email didn’t die to build encrypted messaging; I don’t know if they go away,” Mac said.
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