If you care about your privacy online and when using your chat applications, then you most likely are appalled by the newly introduced EARN IT Act bill currently making its way through the US Senate.
If passed as law, this bill will allow the government, through law enforcement agencies, to create ‘back-door’ entries to chat applications such as Facebook, Tinder, and the rest of the popular messengers. But, what if you had the option to avoid these apps altogether?
Unstoppable Domains, a company focused on creating decentralized solutions for the new age world has released a new decentralized chat app protocol dubbed ‘dChat’ that will enable users to have full control over their messages and data.
According to a press release published on Tuesday, the new dChat protocol integrates with the popular Ethereum network to ensure that users have total privacy and confidentiality when chatting. As a protocol, Unstoppable Domains says that anyone can use it to develop their chat applications. It seems some companies are already doing it.
“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,” the release noted.
The decentralized chat protocol was incubated at Mozilla Foundation’s “Fix the Internet” incubator program aimed at encouraging the development of privacy-focused solutions for the Web 3.0 internet. To use an app developed using the dChat protocol, users will need an Ethereum wallet.
“You must use an Ethereum wallet private key. That is what guarantees that no one can access the chat other than you. If you’re concerned about privacy, then create a wallet just to store your domain. You can remain pseudo-anonymous,” Unstoppable Domains co-founder Brad Kim explained.
Privacy has been a growing topic in the recent past owing to large multinational corporations and companies using user data for commercial purposes. You probably remember the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018 that contributed to Facebook’s multi-billion-dollar fine last year.
There are examples everywhere of either private companies misappropriating their users’ private data for commercial gains or governments tapping into popular apps to snoop on their citizens’ activities. Having an uncompromising privacy-focused protocol such as dChat will help towards the fight for a free and fair internet.
“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,” Kim added.
