As we know we are in a bear market for a year (since Nov 2021), Bitcoin price seems to be in a free fall, even on relatively long time frames, and it has even dipped below the 2018 ATH of $20k. Nearly all the altcoins followed a similar trajectory, some more than others. We also saw great disasters like Luna and FTX unfold.

But with all this said, I think it’s still a great time to be in the web3 space. For instance, have a look at the active Ethereum Addresses:

Active Ethereum Addresses

While this is not the only metric pointing to the growth of Web3, it’s an important one.

So the thing is, despite the negative downturns in the crypto/web3 space, the web3 ecosystem is thriving and the development of cool decentralized tech hasn’t slowed down. Although I might add that the recent downturns have in fact helped to weed out bad actors in the space. All this is potentially good news to drive innovation. So before we get into building in web3, let’s look at the problems facing this ecosystem. One of the most fundamental pieces of web3 has been communication. Here’s a tweet by Vitalik on the same:

https://preview.redd.it/emlttv3oeeba1.png?749&format=png&auto=webp&s=497b65f66191c11fb82a2e8cda93435f7f4a036e

The thing is, the vast majority of the communication and planning takes place on mainly web2 platforms. From discussing new proposals on discord to sharing “wen moon” memes on Twitter, everything takes place on centralized servers.

Given the recent events surrounding FTX and Twitter, the importance of decentralization can not be overemphasized. While the web3 tech stack has made great progress in decentralizing finance, which started with Bitcoin, decentralizing Computing, which started with Ethereum and specifically EVM, now decentralizing other parts of the web3 stack is important if we want a fully decentralized web3 ecosystem.

Therefore it’s crucial to have a decentralized and web3 native communication platform, with the following key characteristic:

• Censorship Resistant
• Encrypted & Secure
• Open Source
• Web3 Native

Push Protocol

Push protocol aims to solve this precise problem of communication on web3. It is the multi-chain communication stack for web3. It is building a suite of products to enable notifications, chat, ads, streaming, and more. Push token is the critical piece of the protocol, securing, governing, and incentivizing all ecosystem participants.

Push Protocol currently has two major products in its suite, Push Notifications and Push Chat.

Push Notifications

So what is the big deal about notifications? If you go back in time, push notifications have transformed the Web3 ecosystem. They have enabled applications to have more direct relationships with users and have yielded fundamental strategies about marketing, product fit, user behavior, and more. The problem with Web2 notifications, however, is that they are entirely created and prescribed by the applications themselves, and are not always net-useful to the end user. Users rarely have a choice about what kinds of notifications they wish to receive, and more often than not, notifications are purely marketing vehicles to drive revenue for the applications.

Decentralized notifications, on the other hand, provide the emerging Web3 ecosystem with the benefits of a robust notification ecosystem without the exploitative or centralized drawbacks of Web2 notifications. Push protocol is the first and largest network to bring push notifications into the web3 space. It enables web3 users to send and receive notifications directly with their wallet address, alerting them of on-chain or off-chain activities. Push allows Web3 actors (users, dapps, service providers) to create notifications that are can be based on any off-chain or on-chain logic that can be triggered via smart contract, backend, or dapps. These come from an open communication network (push nodes) and are tied to wallet addresses allowing any crypto wallet, frontend, or infra service to display it to Web3 users. It has multi-chain support and is currently live on Ethereum and Polygon main-net, with support for other blockchains coming soon.

Push Chat

Launched in early October, Push chat enables secure and instant communication for web3 users and dapps across web3. Push Chat is a secure messaging protocol built by Push Protocol. Messages are encrypted, signed, and stored on IPFS and they are sent through Push Nodes.

What are Push Nodes?

Both Push chat and Push notifications are powered by Push Nodes. Push Nodes are a network of nodes whose main task is to validate that:

• The payload is following the corresponding payload standard (learn more),
• The sender can actually send the message, and signature validation,
• If the payload is valid, the Push Nodes will store the message on IPFS and then send a notification to the receiver of the message.

The Push team currently runs the Push nodes for Push chat and notification, and the team is working towards decentralizing the network. Once it is fully decentralized, anyone will be able to run it, and it will be incentivized with the $PUSH token.

So all-in-all, I think it’s a cool project, and it can potentially solve the communication problem in web3, and eventually, we will move to decentralized alternatives of Discord and Twitter.