Grants Proposal #006 - WalletChat

Champion(s): Christian Montoya

Project Name: WalletChat

Category: Messaging / Social

Project Description / Executive Summary:

At current, there is no easy and secure way to contact the owner of another wallet, in order to eg. negotiate transactions, verify identity, or simply for social purposes. WalletChat solves this by providing a simple and secure wallet-to-wallet direct messaging. Communicate with the owner of any wallet using their public address or ENS.

Project Goals:

It will add direct messaging functionality to MetaMask, supplementing the already existing financial functionality.

Decentralised social media is becoming a strongly emerging narrative in crypto. With the integration of WalletChat, Metamask has the chance to become a frontrunner of web3 social, by enabling messaging for their users, within the gated environment of Snaps to being with, and later on, if successful, to roll this out for all users.

The WalletChat team has already built the underlying messaging protocol and the dapp. It is live, has an active community of 2.000+ members, users who have collectively made around 50k API calls, partners including IPFS, Lit Protocol, POAP, BanklessDAO, and about 50 dapp integrations on the waitlist. We just need to modify the UI to fit within MetaMask snaps, and later on strengthen the underlying infrastructure to handle more traffic as needed.

On the side of MetaMask, we simply need a go-ahead and basic support, to make the integration happen.

Target Milestones:

1. Integrate receiving of message notifications inside MetaMask via snaps - will point to the existing WalletChat web app

2. Integrate sending of messages from inside of MetaMask, without having to enter the existing WalletChat web app

3. Enhanced spam filtering giving the user controls as to who can message them using on-chain data, leveraging Lit Protocol

4. Scale the infrastructure in line with increased usage

5. Extra features as needed and agreed, including group messaging, announcements, etc (all optional)

Timeline / Path to Production: 2-3 months, depending on agreed scope

About Team:

M Goes - https://twitter.com/m_goes_distance - 6 years startup veteran. Previously scaled a prop tech startup up to Series B as Head of Operations. Before starting WalletChat, a core contributor at BanklessDAO, IreneDAO, JennyDAO, WildFireDAO. A KOL featured in Verge. Antler alumnus. Startup mentor via a government-affiliated scheme.

Kevin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-larson-2b9203241/ - Principal cyber security engineer with almost 20 years of experience. Chainshot alumnus, Speaker at Recon Brussels, winner of multiple ETH hackathons, before starting WalletChat.

These are the two founders + we have an awesome core team from all over web3!

Funding Request and Budget Breakdown :

$10k initial ask to develop milestones 1-2. Let's use that as a test initial deployment, and scope any further steps 3-5 from there on together, depending on success and feedback.

Other Information / Relevant Links / Supporting Documents:

https://walletchat.fun/

https://twitter.com/wallet_chat

https://github.com/Wallet-Chat/widgetdemo/blob/main/README.md