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Welcome to Messity

We believe that people's messages should not be routed through the hands of centralized service providers. Even when using state-of-the-art encryption of messages, there are many drawbacks of centralized messaging services in terms of privacy and security. By taking advantage of the cutting-edge technology of the Internet Computer blockchain, Messity may be the first viable no-compromise approach to a decentralized messaging protocol.

Core Concept​

The objective of Messity is to provide an open communication layer on the Internet Computer. It is designed to be unopinionated to allow for arbitrary messaging between any entity. Messity not only provides a standardized way to send and receive messages but also stores them securely on-chain. Developers do not need to worry about the security and scalability of message storage when using Messity.

Our vision with Messity is to empower applications with user-owned and user-governed decentralized messaging. Whether an application is in need of:

  • notifications,
  • email services,
  • instant messaging (IM),
  • or some other form of text messaging,

it can easily be implemented using Messity.

Architecture​

Messity consists of one main canister smart contract and multiple box canisters. Each interaction with the protocol starts at the main canister. This way, users of the protocol only need to know one canister principal to use Messity.

Messity is built to support infinite storage of messages. We utilize a so-called factory pattern, where the main canister dynamically installs box canisters that stores the messages. Users are decoupled from the messages in such a way that a user's messages may be distributed among many canisters. Thus, users do not have to worry about running out of storage capacity.

The protocol is designed to avoid current limitations regarding inter-canister query calls on the Internet Computer. By having the main canister return the principals of the box canister where a user's messages are stored, users may fetch their messages only using query calls for near-instant message retrieval.

What's Next​

While the current implementation of Messity has proved to be very useful and efficient, we have many plans for future work. Some of the major planned milestones involve:

  • End-to-end encryption
  • Certified query calls
  • Continued cycles consumption research
  • Tokenomics research
  • Self-sustainability
  • Open Internet Service (SNS)

When the Internet Computer allows for it, Messity will become tokenized and a user-owned and user-governed protocol by utilizing the Service Nervous System (SNS). We will also implement end-to-end encryption and research the possibility of using the popular Signal protocol to possibly become the first decentralized messaging service using Signal.

Currently, the costs to run the protocol are covered by the founding team. The vision is to make the protocol self-sustainable either by having each message being paid for (ultimately covered by the front-end dapp) or by having the most frequent senders, i.e. dapps, pay enough to cover the costs for less frequent senders, i.e. everyday users. We will continue our research on cycle consumption and tokenomics to see which approach is most viable and desired by the community.