Grill.chat, a Subsocial Network (SUB)-based chat application, now supports Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) wallets, allowing users to chat using their Ethereum identities and send cryptocurrency to each other via Polygon (MATIC), as announced on June 7.
Subsocial is a Polkadot parachain (DOT) designed for social media applications.
Grill.chat allows users to participate in more than 70 chat rooms focused primarily on cryptocurrency-related topics. The development team seeks to attract new Web3 projects to build their communities on the platform.
The June 7th EVM integration means users can now connect their Subsocial wallets to their EVM wallets by signing a transaction that verifies ownership of the wallet. This saves them from having to own SUB tokens to donate to other users, and 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 stated that Grill.chat is targeting crypto projects as potential chat room sponsors. Currently, many cryptocurrency 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 or interact with the community, creating what Edwards considers unnecessary friction for users.
Instead, Grill.chat’s group chats can be integrated into the interface of a development team’s website or app. Edwards pointed to the example of Zeitgeist, a blockchain-based prediction trading app. His interface features a “chat” icon that directly opens a Zeitgeist chat room at Grill.chat.
However, users of the app have previously encountered friction from another source, according to Edwards. Many of the largest cryptocurrency projects are on EVM-based networks, such as Ethereum, Polygon, and Avalanche. Cryptocurrency users are used to using wallets from these networks and don’t necessarily want to download a new wallet to use a chat app.
To partially resolve this issue, the team implemented a feature that allows users to create a Subsocial wallet directly from the app’s interface. They also paid users’ gas fees using a smart contract that can delegate signing privileges for a limited number of functions.
However, this did not completely solve the problem, as it separated the user’s Ethereum identity from their Grill.chat messages. The team implemented EVM support to make it easier for Ethereum users to switch to the app, Edwards explained.
“The nice thing is that it uses this off-chain signer technology because, after all, everything works with Substrate [tecnología de paracaídas de Polkadot]and EVM wallets are not compatible with Substrate,” says Edwards. “But we can still connect those two accounts together so you can chat on the Substrate chain, but your EVM account is linked, so you can have identity, donations, NFTs All these kinds of things.”
Grill.chat is not the only social media app trying to entice cryptocurrency projects to build communities on it. OpenChat is an Internet Computer Network (ICP) chat application. His team told Cointelegraph that they are working on a similar feature to display OpenChat chat rooms on a project website.
Web3 companies are rushing to create a massively adopted blockchain-based social media application. On April 26, Polygon-based network Lens announced a new scaling solution that it says will enable “instant posts.” On the same day, MeWe said it would move its 20 million users to Polkadot’s Frequency parachain network.
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