A comprehensive look at the Ethereum instant messaging tool Blockscan Chat: Why has it become a phenomenal product?

Author: Nianqing, Chain Catcher

On January 26, the team at Blockscan, the Etherscan blockchain explorer, released the beta version of Blockscan Chat, becoming another phenomenal product in the crypto industry, with many influencers sharing test screenshots on social media. According to relevant screenshots, Vitalik is also using this product.

It is reported that Blockscan Chat is a messaging platform where users can sign in using Ethereum wallets like MetaMask, IMToken, or Rainbow. Once signed in, users can send messages for free to anyone with their Ethereum wallet address (ENS domain), enabling instant chat.

This feature is quite similar to SMS on mobile phones, allowing contact as long as you have the other party's number (address), including vitalik.eth. Currently, the functionality is relatively simple, limited to sending messages and some basic emojis, and users can also see each other's online and offline status. Additionally, for convenience, you can set a nickname for the other party. After a hands-on experience by Chain Catcher reporters, the speed was fast and there were no lags, achieving real-time chat.

However, Blockscan Chat is not built on a blockchain network and is not a decentralized application. Similar to products like WhatsApp and WeChat, Blockscan Chat processes data on a central server, so chat records are not publicly available on the blockchain like transaction records, and there are no gas fees, but it cannot guarantee that the recipient will see or reply to the message.

Blockscan Chat is currently in beta. Some community users have informally referred to this tool as "Ethereum Instant Messaging." Regarding user privacy and data storage, Blockscan pointed out that its information is stored through "global hosting service providers," with servers distributed across multiple regions, and inactive data will be deleted after 24 months.

Blockscan also noted that this information will not be sold to third parties but may be disclosed or transferred to partners, such as data warehouses, IT service providers, and data analytics agencies. According to the terms of service, any user who violates its acceptable use policy (e.g., providing false, inaccurate, or misleading information) may be banned from using some or all related services of Blockscan and Etherscan.

Blockscan Chat also has a spam prevention feature that only allows new chat conversations with users who have sent at least one transaction on Ethereum (only applicable before starting a new conversation). However, this feature is difficult to stop spam and harassment, as many well-known influencers and celebrities have publicly shared their ENS domains. Some netizens even suggested that small payments should be enabled to raise the social threshold. More use cases for Blockscan Chat are yet to be developed.

Ryan Sean Adams from Bankless stated that you could even use this tool to communicate with hackers, which could be useful in negotiating fund returns.

For example, on January 21, during the Multichain hacking incident, a person claiming to be a "white hat hacker" returned 322 ETH to the cross-chain router protocol and an affected user, keeping 62 ETH as a "bug bounty." It is reported that this hacker has been communicating with Multichain and the affected users to negotiate the return of 80% of the funds in exchange for a high finder’s fee. Therefore, such negotiations and discussions are likely to occur.

Additionally, some netizens believe that Blockscan Chat could become a strong competitor to NFT markets like Opensea. After all, in the Web 2.0 world, avoiding platform intermediaries for private transactions is very common. One netizen said, "When I see an NFT I like, why not just message the owner directly and use something like Sudoswap to buy it and save on intermediary fees?" This makes a lot of sense.

Currently, Blockscan Chat is still in the early stages of development, and some speculate that this tool could evolve like Alipay or WeChat, allowing direct transfers, NFT trading, and combining social interactions with transactions through the chat window. However, there is currently no product roadmap available, and the product's minimalist design could also be a possibility.

In fact, Etherscan has previously explored on-chain communication. Last October, Etherscan launched the Ethereum IDM (Input Data Messages) feature, developing a visual page for the accompanying Input Data notes in Ethereum transactions, allowing users to intuitively view the relevant Input Data history of specific addresses and conveniently send Input Data messages to those addresses.

Although Blockscan Chat has become a hot product in the crypto industry upon launch, it is not the first chat tool aimed at the crypto sector.

Similar to Blockscan Chat, there is a social application called Orbis, which is a decentralized version of Twitter built on Ceramic and Arweave. Anyone with an Ethereum address can create their own decentralized ID and share posts without paying any transaction fees. More importantly, all users' posts, chat content, and other user data are owned by the users themselves, and the platform has no rights to use them, allowing users to package their data to open and use in other applications.

There is also a lesser-known social tool called inb0x, developed and launched by TCG Crypto Investment Company last December, which is a simple messaging tool built for web3. Like Blockscan Chat, inb0x enables peer-to-peer, wallet-to-wallet communication through connecting MetaMask wallets or ENS addresses, or providing quotes on NFTs.

Additionally, there are products exploring chat functions based on on-chain addresses, such as Jabber based on Solana, OpenChat based on DFINITY, dChat launched by Unstoppable Domains, and Rarible Messenger launched by Rarible. However, due to cost, user habits, and threshold issues, their general usage is not high.

As one of the most frequently used platforms by crypto users, Etherscan has a scene advantage and network effect compared to other competitors. Users can click a button to access the chat page while viewing any address information, and the probability of other users entering the platform to view information is also higher than with other products. Therefore, it is well-received by Ethereum OG users and has the potential to become an important social and chat tool among experienced on-chain users in the future.