What is Steem Messenger?

Steem Messenger is the ultimate chat application developed for the Steem blockchain. Our application is a cryptographically secure communication layer designed to protect your privacy and to facilitate communications through the Steem ecosystem.

What is the issue on Steem?

User retention

While the steem ecosystem is getting more and more elaborate, with the hundreds of applications that pop up every now and then, and also the numerous communities that are forming every day, it becomes obvious that having some common ground to facilitate interactions is an actual need.

Today, to reach a user, you must find his Discord/Steem.Chat/Telegram/other identifier. This can be relatively easy if this person happens to be on the same discussions groups as you, but can be a real pain if you don't have any relation with him.

This can slow down many things, from development, to building communities.

Many users don't know there are large communities on Discord and therefore don't dig a little bit more to find them, which can lead new users to not feeling supported and can make them quit the network.

Security

Discord and Steem.Chat are both great ways to substitute the need for a proper common solution for communicating into the Steem network. What about security?

We found that many users have reported scams and identity theft in those communication mediums, which reveals their inherent flaw: they are not designed for Steem.

There is no non-intrusive way to be sure that the user you are talking with is effectively who he claims to be on those apps. Because accounts are not linked to the blockchain, and anybody can create a fake account on purpose.

Privacy

Before HF20, users would use the transfer functionality to send a message, encrypted or not, to a recipient. This is a pretty inefficient way to send a message (costs resources credits), and even if your messages are encrypted, anybody on the network can see with who you've been engaging lately, at what frequency, and/or determine patterns in your bot/steem business, which can lead to loosing money for example.

Furthermore, you cannot blacklist anyone from sending you transfers, so it is also not a good notification center.

The solution : Steem Messenger!

With Steem Messenger, finding a user is as easy as it can get. Simply type the username of a user you want to send a message. And... voilà!

Our application is designed with a lot of care concerning every aspect of security. *Security by design*. In fact, there is mathematical certainty that your message goes through a secure discussion channel.

From now, businesses and developers can use our communication layer to reach their audiences, and empowering them, without hassle, nor to use precious RC's, and sending money for each message.

Users can create a blacklist or whitelist, in order to give them the right to sort and choose who can reach to them.

Finally, users are limited to only fetching their conversations. Which means nobody can know who you've been talking to.

Features

- Triple Dose Algorithm:

We use a great combo of algorithms to ensure your security and your privacy.

The triple dose algorithm starts here. First, we use a fix hmac derivation + Diffie Hellman key exchange, which is a mathematical way to create a secret between you and your recipient. Secondly, we use AES-GCM to encrypt your messages, which make Steem Messenger an **End To End Encryption** communication layer. Lastly, every communication between the client/server is encrypted with AES-GCM, which make this communication layer secure, even without SSL (https).

- Lara:

Lara is the greek goddess of secrecy. She sees things but cannot talk about them. On Steem Messenger, Lara is the trusted intermediary between everyone into the network. It is a set of rules needed in order to have a standard protocol to communicate inside the blockchain (a bit like SteemConnect works). She verifies the identity of each message, and forwards it to the correct client, without ever knowing what is inside.

- Decentralized Public Key Infrastructure:

Steem is our Decentralized Public Key Infrastructure (DPKI). It's like an immutable and highly secure contact book that we use in order to put users into relation. You are the only one to possess the ownership of your data/authorities, and nobody can change your public keys, thus solving one of the major issue on almost all centralized communication layers.

Special features:

- Files transfers:

We developed a fast a safe way to send any kind of file to your recipient. However, files can take a lot of place! Therefore, for free users, we set a limit of 100kb per file transfer, which should let you send some basic files and/or little funny images/*memes*. Once you choose a paid plan, you can get up to 5 Megabytes per file transfer. These limits will increase when our application gets bigger.

- Special events:

We have a lot of ideas for this feature, which is exclusively reserved to paid users. For instance, projects validated by our team can promote their activities, and/or send gifts to our users, such as airdrops, and so on. Users would be rewarded for joining the paid plan by receiving community rewards, SMT's, or any gift that you can think.

- Developers API:

We are also working on having an API for developers and business owners, that needs to communicate easily with their audiences.

Users

We put a lot of care into our application in order to deliver the same level of confidence that users would expect from the blockchain industry. Wether users choose a free or paid plan, we believe they should be given the same level of security. However, paid plans will give you more features, as we want to reward users that support us.

Project owners

We also designed Steem Messenger for project/businesses owners. In totally anonymizing interactions inside our network, it becomes way harder to predict your activity, thus avoiding patterns attacks.

Pricing

Here are the pricing plans available at launch.

Early offer

For this Fundition campaign, you can choose one of our Funditian rewards. You will be able to claim your subscription as soon as our app becomes available.

We will also give away some subscriptions on a regular basis in community contests.

How the funding will be used

The funding will be used to cover our server architecture initial expenses ($500 yearly), promotional campaign on Steem ($ 300 per post), and past and future R&D around the project. We want to focus on the developement of business features, such as a powerful API. The funding will help us cover our expenses for the time of execution.

Steem Messenger's future

We have a lot of ideas about the future of this project, such as group chats, visio/voice calls, and many more exciting features. To ensure our goals, we are reaching to you to find the funding for this project. Steem Messenger is built for Steemians, by Steemians. It is designed for those who only accept the best, and it's quite beautiful to use.

We believe this communication layer will be the solid foundation that links all Dapps and communities on Steem. By making interactions easier and safer, we aim to make the network stronger and empowered.

Keep yourself up to date!

Subscribe to our page, and follow our updates about all the upcoming features!

Final words

We are experiencing a lot of fun in developing this app for the community. On our minds, try to conceive the best security solution is really exciting! We believe that each internet user should have right to not be spied upon in their private communications. We all know how big corporations on the internet take drastic measures to protect their users with message filtering techniques. They often reserve the rights to use your private conversations as a data source for advertisers. We want to fight against and empower people to have safe interactions that cannot be listened by any party. Communication is the base layer of every big project, and we are proud to be working towards this goal.