Integrating new technologies and methods into existing frameworks is fundamental to progressing innovations. Multiple schools of thought emphasize the primitivity of functionality and how all inventions draw inspiration from existing methodologies, technologies, and practices.
The impending app fatigue and the prominence of chat as web3’s prominent interface lead crypto solutions to use chat applications like Discord, Telegram, X(Twitter), and Signal for transactions, community building, and real-time customer support, making chat the gateway to web3 for most participants.
The State of Web3 Integration in Chat Applications
Currently, financial incentives are the primary driver of web3 integration in chat applications. Features like trading, payments, and automated crypto research are often concentrated on platforms like Discord and Telegram, which are the most popular.
While these functionalities offer new avenues for engagement, they can also lead to a hyper-focused pursuit of profit that may neglect other potential benefits and raise concerns about user exploitation.
This limited approach restricts the full potential of web3 integration and hinders the ability to create a wholesome experience in the long run.
Chat Can do the Most for Web3
Communication plus transactions make the perfect combo in the digital world we now live in. The Web3-chat app integration not only democratizes access to web3 services for the billions of chat app users, but it can also play a crucial role in banking the unbanked, improving innovation in web3, and enhancing community management.
Web3 Onboarding Via Chat Apps
Integrating crypto operations into chat apps opens up possibilities to a broader audience. Popular chat apps like Discord and Telegram boast billions of users globally, which helps normalize crypto usage for daily transactions, savings, and investments.
Ideally, Web3 services can start by getting a share of supported chat apps screentime without users experiencing app fatigue in the early stages before migrating to their apps as users get familiar with their services.
Banking the Unbanked
Chat apps with crypto functionalities drastically reduce the entry barrier for the unbanked populace for financial participation.
This, in turn, should increase financial activities and opportunities in regions previously marginalized from the global financial system.
Improving Innovation in Web3 Offerings
Integrating crypto functions in chat apps encourages innovation in digital services, from DEFI to smart contracts and automated financial transactions within chat apps.
Eventually, there will be a flux of services and apps that blend web3’s social capital with its most used feature (financial transactions), similar to the web2 chat app plus financial transactions that projects like Dialect and Telegram offer.
The Future of Web3 through Chat
More projects are integrating web3 features into chat apps, and web3 social apps like Warpcast have other nontraditional chat app features (NFTs) integrated into the app.
Web3 chat apps can give other web3-based projects the cosign they need for adoption based on their primitive features. Since they’re designed to be decentralized, secure, and permissionless with self-sovereign identity (SSI) features, they can solve the issues that plague web2 chat apps.
Let’s walk through possible integrations of web3 in chat app interfaces (web2 and web3):
NFTs on Social Apps
Web3 apps like Warpcaster and Debank have integrated NFTs into the social fabric. In no distant future, users can showcase, use, trade, and give NFTs directly within the chat interface.
NFT standards for self-sovereign identity may also be an excellent feature for web3 chat applications. NFTs can offer promising features for self-sovereign identity in web3 chat apps: user control, portability, and selective disclosure. They can also help build trust through verification and reputation systems.
Transactions On Chat Apps With Wallet Integrations
Web3 chat applications will integrate wallet integrations (via popular wallet apps or built-in wallets) for users to transact with crypto onchain without fragmentation.
Transactions in chat apps will result in better user experience since users don’t have to leave a dApp to transact, providing an immersive experience.
In-Chat Decentralized Voting
Integrating voting in chat platforms for decentralized technologies offers a transformative method for users to make information-driven decisions based on aggregated opinions.
In-Chat Decentralized voting combines the security, transparency, and fairness of blockchain with the immediacy of chat applications, allowing community members to vote on important issues directly within chat apps.
This approach ensures meaningful, informed participation in a democratic, engaging, censorship-resistant environment.
Smart Contracts
Chat dApps can simplify smart contract interaction by providing a conversational layer that translates user commands into smart contract actions.
This could give users access to smart contract functions like minting tokens for fundraising and other creative operations users choose.
Conclusion
Embedding complex blockchain functionalities within intuitive chat interfaces can significantly lower users’ cognitive load (app fatigue) and make web3 technologies more accessible.
In this essence, chat becomes more than a communication tool but an interface for engaging and onboarding participants with the spectrum of web3 services.