Subsocial chat program implements Ethereum usernames, Polygon donations

Grill.chat, a chat app based on the Subsocial network, has now implemented Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) wallet compatibility, allowing users to chat using their Ethereum identity and via Polygon, according to a June 7 announcement. Can send crypto to each other.

Subsocial is a Polkadot parachain designed for social media applications.

Grill.chat allows users to participate in over 70 chat rooms mostly focused on crypto-related topics. The development team seeks to attract new Web3 projects to build their communities on the platform.

The integration means that users can now verify their Subsocial wallet by signing a transaction from their EVM wallet to verify that they are the owner of the wallet. This prevents them from needing to own SUB tokens to donate to other users, and it allows them to prove their Ethereum identity to users in chat rooms. In the future, the developers plan to use this integration to allow non-fungible token (NFT) collections to be displayed to other users.

In a conversation with Cointelegraph, Subsocial CEO Zachary Edwards said that Grill.chat is targeting crypto projects as potential sponsors for the chat room. Currently, many crypto communities are built around Discord servers and Telegram channels. These channels cannot be integrated into the developer’s website, meaning users need to load a separate program to join the community or interact with it, which makes AdWords an unnecessary friction for users. sees as

In contrast, chat groups on Grill.chat can be integrated into the development team’s website or application interface. Edwards pointed to the example of Zeitgeist, a blockchain-based forecast market app. Its interface has a “chat” icon that opens directly to a Zeitgeist chat room on Grill.chat.

However, users of the app have previously encountered friction from another source, Edwards said. Many of the largest crypto projects are on EVM-based networks such as Ethereum, Polygon, and Avalanche. Crypto users are accustomed to using wallets from these networks and may not necessarily want to download a new wallet just to use the chat app.

Connected: Decentralized Social Media: The Next Big Thing in Crypto?

To partially solve this problem, the team has implemented a feature that lets users create a Subsocial wallet directly from the app’s interface. They also pay for users’ gas fees through a smart contract that can sign privileges for a limited number of actions.

But it still didn’t completely solve the problem, as it silenced the user’s Ethereum identity from their Grail.chat posts. The team implemented EVM compatibility to make it easier for Ethereum users to switch to the app, Edwards explained.

“The good thing is that it’s using this off-chain signer technology, because at the end of the day, it’s all running on Substrate (Polkdot parachain technology), and not compatible with EVM wallet Substrate,” Edwards said. Are.” “But we can still link those two accounts together so you can chat on the Substrate chain, but have your EVM account linked, so you can have identities, donations, NFTs, all that sort of thing.”

Grill.chat is not the only social media app trying to entice crypto projects to build communities on it. OpenChat is a chat app on the Internet computer network. Its team told Cointelegraph that it is working on a similar feature to showcase OpenChat chat rooms on the project’s website.

Web3 companies are racing to build a blockchain-based social media app that will see mass adoption. On 26 April, the polygon-based Lens Network announced a new scaling solution, which it said would allow “instant posts”. On the same day, MeWe said it would move its 20 million users to the Polkadot parachain network frequency.