The other day I was talking to a buddy of mine, he's a father at the same school as Lily. As he was smack-talking the regular social media, I skillfully dropped the "HIVE-Bomb", and he got interested pretty quickly. While I was trying to not get too excited and overwhelm him with all the nitty gritty (well, not all, the little I know), he asked me if there was an encrypted messenger as well.
So, I remembered that little brain-fart-like-thing in the upper right corner of PeakD that nobody ever clicks on.
That one. I had actually written to a few people there before I found them on Discord, and most of them either never replied, or weeks later with a "Bro, I thought you were a scammer" or a "Yeah, nobody uses this."
As far as I understand, that direct and community messenger - by the way, does anyone know the name? - uses private and public memo key to encrypt messages. I just looked in there, the newest message is on the PeakD main-community-server and is 7 days old. Most of those messages are way, way older. Some communities don't have any.
Why let such a cool resource go to waste?
Please remember that my knowledge about HIVE is not that extended, yet. I hope to learn a lot in your comments, though!
It seems like it has been abandoned, which I (and my encrypto-message-buddy) think is quite sad. I often would like to chat with folks here, without having to switch to Discord. Yes, Discord works fine and has a lot of perks, but I'd prefer to have it all-in-one. It's one less tab open.
And one more use case for HIVE.
Chatting is a universal thing, and many people are worried about all their chats being unofficially used to gather as much data as possible, train LLMs, sell advertising, and so on. And even the ones that are not officially owned by big tech are still somewhat sketchy, and everything is owned by someone with the intention to make money.
HIVE is not owned by anyone, but everyone. Offering a chat app would be another easy gateway into the Hiverse, because once the account is created, all the other perks come automatically - HQ content, snaps, transactions, 3speak, ... It's all right there.
Privacy is important, and since HIVE does not need any personal data, but runs of a username, it's easy to protect that privacy. The adjacent posting key could be used to secure the chat in a front-end.
Use cases
One thing that I'm missing in Splinterlands for example is a chat. If a chat based on the HIVE chain is established and working, then SPL and other games could probably latch on to that and include it into the game as well, as they run on the blockchain, too, and use the same keys.
It might be possible to integrate it into the Snaps-App as well. Unfortunately, Snap-Chat is already taken, and we don't want 
And then, as mentioned, an argument to get more people on board. I never mentioned the potential payment for quality content on the platform to my buddy, all I did was tell him about the (almost) complete freedom, the attached responsibility, and the decentralization. That was enough. He'll be happily surprised when he finds out that he can swap his HBD for my bread... Having an encrypted, nicely working chat is just another argument to get on the chain.
What are the risks?
As always. People can abuse of the privacy, as it's a little dark-web-like. And no, I have no idea how to prevent that. I'm not a programmer, unfortunately, and as mentioned, my knowledge of how exactly the blockchain works and if filters are in place and such is minimal at best.
Besides that, the risk is the same as always when giving people unchecked freedom. In posts and comments, yes, there's some balance through muting and down-voting, but in private chats? There is no control at all, as far as I can see.
Getting keys stolen gives the thief access to all messages. But those are usually more interested in getting the tokens, not the messages, and everyone should
People who want to abuse and take advantage will always find a way.
That said, what do you think? Is there an upside potential in an app like that, helping the hive to grow? Would you use a hive-based messenger?