OpenChat CHAT / OpenChat

What is OpenChat?

OpenChat is a fully featured, decentralized chat application, running on the Internet Computer blockchain. It has direct messages and private groups like WhatsApp and Signal, public groups like Telegram, and “communities” which are like Slack workspaces or Discord servers.

It is a responsive, progressive web application (PWA) which scales to take advantage of any screen size and integrates with devices in a similar way to native apps, including push notifications. You can find the full development roadmap here.

The app is open source and runs as a collection of canister smart-contracts. It is possible to see the code running on any canister at any time with a link back to the particular version in source control and to independently verify this is true.

A canister is created for each user which holds their direct chat data, links to the groups/communities they are members of, and also serves as a wallet allowing OpenChat users to hold and manage tokens. Each group and “community” is also implemented as its own canister. This architecture will allow OpenChat to scale to 100s of millions of users.

OpenChat users can send messages to each other containing tokens such as ICP, ckBTC, ckETH and soon ckUSDT and so can be used for global remittance.

The main point of difference between OpenChat and similar apps, is that it's governed as a DAO.

What is the CHAT token?

OpenChat has an associated utility token called CHAT.

- It can be staked as neurons (very similar to ICP neurons) allowing token holders to participate in the governance of OpenChat by voting on SNS proposals, and by doing so, earn voting rewards. These rewards increase the longer the tokens are staked and so token holders are incentivised to act in the long term interests of OpenChat. - It can be used by OpenChat users to pay for Diamond membership and other premium features. - It can be used to reward contributions to the evolution or growth of the OpenChat service either through automated user rewards or by SNS proposal.

CHAT has an initial supply of 100M tokens. 2.5% of the total supply is minted annually to reward neuron holders for participating in governance by voting on proposals. CHAT can be burned to reduce the supply.