Matt Wisniewski on building Satellite IM as a censorship resistant messenger

0:01I'm Ashton Addison from Block West capital for investment pitch media and today on the crypto coin show we have Matt Wisniewski founder and CEO of satellite IM welcome to show Matt and thank you for taking the time thank you Ashton glad to be here you're very welcome let's dive into instant messaging how do we move from you know WhatsApp Facebook messenger and all of

0:22these uh messaging platforms that are controlled by the the technology oligarchy into something that helps us preserve more of our information you know involves web3 identities encryption and all that stuff that is really necessary because there's a lot of flaws in sort of web 2 Messengers right now I'm really interested to hear what you and your team at Satellite I am have

0:46been working on in this regard and I would love to kick it off by just yeah a little bit on you know an overview on how you would explain satellite to somebody who's just getting into web3 and they're familiar with using all these instant messaging systems how would you explain satellite to them yeah well first to kind of give a broad answer to your intro question I think

1:05the way that you uh kind of take back that ownership is build a product that's better than uh the web 2 Alternatives like you know you you don't use crypto as a scapegoat you truly build a better product and then it's a really nice icing on on the top of the cake that hey it's built on top of the centralized Tech but um yeah what we've done at sadly is

1:22we've kind of gone from the ground up um we really just kind of went back to the protocol level and put a bunch of tools together and built kind of our own little SDK that allowed us to build um different platforms on top of it so uh we have a truly agnostic back end you can run it on ethereum Solana Matic whatever you want um and from there it plugs directly into

1:46our uis that we've built um so the minimal effort you really just make one file to support the chain or whatever you want to support we'll obviously have a slew of them that we support and then from there you uh you have a bunch of user-friendly apps that really you don't have to understand anything about crypto or blockchain to use and you can chat in 4k I'm really 8K 16k

2:08whatever your computer can handle um lossless audio we uh we're gonna include um Creator tools so you can record to FLAC or you can record to uh 4K record meetings you know to MP4s with separated audio tracks so really just kind of um bringing what exists in the current web 2 architecture uh reaching feature parity and then doing it better after we've reached parity is kind of our goal

2:35um and then of course you know having no kyc having no ownership of that data is super important to us um the application currently and always will work if we don't exist in the future um I think that you know having your app only work with uh with the company's involvement is like uh uh non-future-proof way to exist as a company um we truly want to continue to

2:59build the best software and that's kind of what we're focused on wow that's an incredible intro Matt and it's great to hear about all those benefits including be able to choose the blockchain technology and obviously having a user experience that makes it easy to use friendly to use and hopefully don't have to understand too much about the blockchain technology you

3:19know uh one of the reasons why you know WhatsApp Facebook Messenger works so well is because my grandma can message me whenever she wants and you know she doesn't really need to understand about the blockchain um and you know it obviously um it wasn't an overnight success for any of those applications either I just have to build up the network effect

3:39um but eventually you'd think you know these are the kinds of applications that could be used by billions of people and everybody in the world yeah that's you know we've got practically Grandma's on contract uh to test out the app like that was uh you know one of the things that comes up in in most of our meetings is you know Grandma's not going to know what if the

4:02ID key is Grandma's not gonna know what a seed phrase is like we need to find better ways to store and back these up and give users options you know should we allow them to save it to camera roll automatically like should we tell them how to save it and put it in a safe like really like make the application like as crypto free as possible um in the UI experience but really

4:25leverage it as a technology in the back end and the primary reason for that is you know crypto is a wonderful place there's so many great projects but there's also a bunch of scams and there's also a bunch of things that have burned the name of crypto in the past and I think it's important for us to win people back over and show them that crypto could be more than money making

4:46schemes and you know trying to flip a quick bucket and gambling and in order to do that we really need to make sure that the front end is you know completely agnostic to that it should be a super easy to use platform and at that point we get people to actually use the platform and test it before having any preconceived judgment about oh crypto is annoying because they're the reason I

5:08can't buy gpus you know it's not true but uh you know there's plenty of reasons why people may be turned off to even give a crypto application a chance in this this current timeline and I don't think all of it's unwarranted but in building where crypto is kind of behind the scenes you know we saved that judgment until they find out later and they may go oh this is pretty cool like

5:28I didn't have to like spend any money like they didn't try to sell me like you know an nft like this is cool and then you know we kind of win them over that way that's great to hear and I I want to go back to what you said at the beginning about just making a better product overall and I'm guessing that your team has sort of analyzed the most popular

5:49apps and and there's always some complaints that people have um what do you think are the main problems with the web 2 messenger that satellite solves is it just a you know censorship and freedom of speech or the the way that the they take your information for advertisers as sort of Facebook is notorious for now and you know turn you into the product and sell

6:09you stuff um what needs to be removed for the people that are using Whatsapp you know those billion people to sort of move over to web3 instant messenger yeah there's a couple um I think for me I would say personally to like my ethos yeah the privacy and extend and like you know security and stuff like that is the most important to me um but I don't think that we've reached

6:33a point where that is the consensus for the general public you know I think people will wake up I actually have a quick sidebar that kind of lends to this and I lost my premium subscription to YouTube um for you know a little bit I had like a privacy.com card and it like it whatever so um I had to watch some ads and it was shocking how far it's come from like we

6:57would make jokes about talking about like a certain thing and then it being advertised to you but now it is like so blatant um but so for me that's really important um not having any trackers and things like that are are really important but there's a slew of things that um the general person may care about more you know you'll find when you're talking to

7:16grandma or someone she doesn't really care about her privacy um she cares about things not being frustrated trading and things being easy to use and I think for the general public you know the young to middle age to older a lot of people don't really care about privacy unfortunately so what we also include and it's really a a battle for which is my favorite is we've

7:38built this thing to be extensible from the ground up uh We've wanted this thing to be something that's hyper modular and something that anyone can customize to be whatever they want and what that really lends to is a way better experience when using the application if you go on and use something like telegram WhatsApp Discord and you want some additional functionality you build

7:56a bot and Discord is like you know they're proud of the fact that now like you can do a slash command and it has a UI for all the available things or it has like a little like highlight for the query we've kind of decided to scrap that whole thing and make extensions modify the entire functionality of the application so if you use Travis Ci or something for your Dev build

8:16environments you should be able to have an actual Channel where those you know builds go and you can actually view them and click around if you want to add a Spotify extension so you can sync up your Spotify accounts and listen together in a group chat and adjust the volume for everybody you can build that it doesn't have to be a slash play command it's literally a play button and

8:36like you go into your friend group and you can see like a little mini satellite themed like Spotify player or whatever like really we wanted this platform to kind of not be decided by us we wanted the future of the platform to be decided by the community and I think the best way to to Foster that is with things like extensions and and customization um I guess one quick thing before I uh

9:00before I move on here is like we really looked at things like uh Minecraft and Skyrim and all these games you know the reason these these simple things that aren't really like that much more powerful than the competition kind of existed for so long in my personal opinion is because of these extensions because these mods and plugins you can hop in Minecraft and let let's say you

9:21wanted to teach like I don't know agriculture or something there's probably a mod to make realistic water and realistic droughts and like all these things like it's insane like you would never like need this in a children's game but if you want to go make a nuclear reactor or something go ahead like work on like sustainable renewable energy and like a block game

9:39like that's kind of the same thing we're doing here is we really think that the key to the success of this platform is we'll Foster and build a really solid foundation for people and they come and build the house on top of that Foundation however they want um and make it easy for other people to walk in their house and experience what they built if someone wants to share

9:58their extension packs or whatever they can do that if you're a Creator and you have a couple things you're passionate about and you want people to use those extensions on your platform uh you can make it so when they join your community it suggests certain extensions you can choose whether or not to install them but it's an easy way for you to share

10:14what you're trying to build your community into so um yeah I I guess you know people care about a lot of different things but I think the best way to please everybody long story short is to make the platform easy to customize make it easy to make theirs and that's kind of been a huge Focus for us on top of the privacy and security aspect yeah that's a great analogy that

10:36you have there too to Skyrim and Minecraft and sort of you know making that infrastructure in a way that people can customize it and once you have that Network effect you're right you know those customization packs and sort of making the game how you want is part major part of the reason why you know it's had a multi-cycle multi-length cycle of why the game is still so

10:59popular you know decade later um and it can definitely get carried away if the company themselves try to just keep making features you know I know like a lot of startups that like well a customer requested this so we're gonna build that and then a customer requested something else so we're going to keep building and like you're building things that you don't really

11:19know for for sure if that's going to be a main function that everyone's going to use or you're spending a lot of time developing something that not a lot of people are going to use so I find that approach of being able to build the infrastructure where hey you can build your own stuff if you want and sort of use it I feel like that is a great approach as

11:36long as it you know the benefits outweigh the cost and you know talking about all these extra functionalities I feel like they're all great I just wanted to cover uh the sort of the basics to see you know if satellite is sort of built in everything that the other ones have built in like for example you have single messages you have group messages you have like video call because you do

11:59group video call or you know what are the limitations and where you're expecting satellite to go yeah I are are kind of like um I guess like main feature list um I would say is direct messages group messages um and then we'll I'll leave communities till the end because there's a lot there but um direct messages group messages um you know direct video

12:22um group video uh we really want to leave the groups uncapped like you could have a group with like a million people in it if you wanted to like probably should make a community but you know you can do whatever you want um and um really uh I guess on top of that file storage um that's like a given like a lot of Architecture is currently based upon ipfs and it kind of makes sense to have

12:43some you know file storage capabilities so um we're going uh pretty hard on that we've kind of Switched the model places like Discord and things like that have a model excuse me of um you have like this much per file to upload like you can do an eight megabyte file or I think they recently like touted that like they have 100 megabytes of like their tier or

13:06whatever um instead we give free users a four gigabyte storage bucket um you can upload a four gigabyte file to that bucket if you want um really with the goal that in most cases when people are just collaborating and working you really only need that file for the moment um you might be sharing a meme or you may be sharing like you know here's the podcast like for your editor something

13:28like that so as you kind of work you can choose to go on like a rolling delete schedule so as you know you put new things in it'll say hey your storage is full do you want to go ahead and unpin or you know we keep it transparent delete this file um from your storage and then hey you can keep rolling and then of course if you want to upgrade to like a two terabyte tier or something

13:48like that like that's that's on the table um and yeah the goal really top to bottom we're gonna have all the functionality of um web 2 like that's the first goal and I think it's the first um kind of responsible goal is to reach parity um and once we've reached parity we're gonna go through make sure everything is perfect you know uh bug free um and then from there that's when we

14:11really start to talk about adding like these you know nice to haves on top of it um but yeah there's there's hopefully there's going to be in-app payments um you know which exact provider we go through to facilitate that is still to be decided but um you know options like Circle um exist um and yeah I mean top to bottom we're gonna try to make sure that we reach you

14:34know parity with all of these apps um we realize that people want to keep things simple so we have our core application which is more akin to something like Discord but then we also have Uplink which is our smaller more minimal application which is more akin to something like telegram or Whatsapp of course you can you know talk between both of them but there may be some

14:54functionality that is decidedly Limited in those applications for people that just want a quick place to chat with family and friends um so it's really about options and like I said if you want to disrupt uh and actually bring something from the crypto space or the blockchain space to the masses it's got to be better than web 2. the average person isn't going to switch

15:14because it's more private or because it's built on top of blockchain the average person is going to switch because hey we need to switch you know it's better it's cheaper for us to use this it has higher quality video you know the podcasts look and sound better on satellite there's going to be a multitude of reasons that are just genuine hey I should switch over to this

15:31and then you know it just so happens it's built on top of blockchain and crypto and you can you know if you do want gated access and things like that it's you know maybe five minutes work to add you know an nft gated access to your community or something like that it's that really does come second and it's not because we don't love crypto it's just because as a business we understand

15:50how we have to disrupt this market and it is by truly being the best without you know the best of people who don't know what web 2 and web3 are which is the majority of human beings on the planet uh and that's kind of what we're targeting definitely and I think that's a great approach Matt and I I don't know if I speak for a lot of the blockchain native people when I say

16:11that they're tired of switching to the blockchain app for increased privacy but it's never as good as you know the web 2-1 in terms of just the user experience and the functionality and that's part of the reason why the network effect is still prevailing on those web 2 apps so many people are using it because it's easy to use yeah it has negatives in you

16:30know the privacy or the the advertising and things but people they're you know they're lazy they're just like let's just use the easiest thing possible um and and try to make a better user experience for blockchain applications you know whether they have blockchain in the back or not um I I feel like is the most important thing and you know I personally don't

16:49use payments inside of you know social messaging platforms but I'm quite curious on your team's approach that you message there you mentioned about the payments um there's uh you know obviously cryptocurrency payments um I'm curious if there's some satellite governance payment default on on there as well but I'm also curious if you're going to be including Fiat payments or

17:12you know PayPal banking things like that and does that sort of ruin the Integrity of a blockchain based application if so no I don't think it does and I think that um you know we we're gonna strive to include Fiat payments um really uh options like options options options that's that's kind of our Focus um you know without spreading ourselves in we want to give the users different

17:34abilities so um we're going to Target Fiat payments it's just we've kind of you know as a community uh dug ourselves in a hole with the banking institutions and being able to support those it often comes with jumping over a bunch of regulatory uh hurdles so you know I'd be lying if I said we have it all figured out right now but it's certainly a goal um you

17:54know finding the right partner to help facilitate those Fiat payments is what's most important and you know that kind of bleeds into everything we do you know there's going to be areas where web2 is just better or the only option uh right now it could be built differently but unless bank accounts start allowing you to have a you know a wallet address

18:13Associated to them it's still going to require some web to centralize like intervention we're gonna have to have some API key that satellite uses to access that you know payment portal so all these things that kind of become caveats to using totally crypto projects we're going to include as toggles you know similar to if you're signing up for Windows or you know you're reinstalling

18:35Mac and it goes through would you like to use Apple's location services do you want to use find my Mac same sort of thing do you want to allow satellite to you know facilitate these payments like do you want to allow satellite to include sync nodes to increase the performance do you want to allow you know this that and other things we want to make them options there will be some

18:56things that unfortunately still need to remain web 2 but all those things that remain web 2 should be able to be turned off with a click of a button for anyone that's using the application the only caveat we do have one caveat and I'm not ashamed of it we do file scanning for anything that has our brand name on it we we scan the files as they're encrypted we don't actually decrypt them

19:19and we run them through a a company called safer currently which just pretty much makes sure there's no child content csam content and that's something we're pretty you know uh pretty dead set on not allowing on the platform so outside of that uh you know everything that is somewhat centralized you know even though those files like they like it was a big thing with apple back in the day

19:44that oh they're looking through your your pictures on your phone to make sure there's no csam content but people will worry that like well what if I took a picture of my you know baby in the bath because I'm like a mother like that's not weird but it could still be flagged we we look at the encrypted version of that file and for all the uh this is my

20:03personal viewpoints not satellite for all the the bad that our government does the you know there are some good things and they have public databases you can check those hashes against so you never actually have to look at the files we don't have to have people like physically moderating files and you know doing that we just say hey this encrypted hash matches the encrypted

20:21hash of this file that is known to be bad um but I digress uh we we basically make everything options except for the most heinous of things to our political beliefs if um you know you don't agree with us Fork our code remove the code but you know if we're going to put our name on it we're going to have you know some minimal uh things in there just to protect our

20:42users definitely definitely well I do like that approach of having file storage uh with instant messaging you know normally uh people aren't expecting that large file storage you know like uh like Dropbox level where you're getting terabytes as well as your instant messenger and be able to store your files there I feel like that's a a nice you know sort of all-in-one approach

21:03um now yeah it's it's time to switch right you know flash drives used to cost 200 for a terabyte now they cost like 15 bucks like the the digital world has to catch up we have you know uh my previous neighborhood had three gigabyte internet in like a Small Town West Virginia like uh you know if we're reaching those kind of speeds like it's time to start taking

21:23you know uh the the internet to the next level I think places like Discord are really like in the past here like 100 megabytes is not a lot I think their free tier used to be eight megabytes which is like you know an iPhone picture is like 30 megabytes like it's just it's time to move on um and once satellite to kind of be the leader in that space definitely well I

21:45applaud you for that uh and now we talked about all these amazing functions and obviously there's a lot to do to get all of it into fruition and get hundreds of millions of people using it um can you talk about where you guys are at right now I saw that there's a pre-release and sort of you know what are the next steps of uh the next versions of the application

22:08yeah we we currently are in the pre-release stage um it includes the web version of our application um I can't personally guarantee this timeline by the time the podcast comes out it you know you'll be able to maybe tell if I was right or not but we're hoping to by the end of this week have a version of our native applications people can test which will be the Uplink

22:29versions that will work on Android and um the desktop version will work on your toaster as well as um you know Mac uh Windows Linux all these things we're really like focusing like a run anywhere architecture it's all built on top of rust which is a systems level language so you know you can do things like put satellite on a you know a a badge or something like

22:54that you can have like your profile show up on like a little Arduino powered badge like you know really making the application Run Anywhere first um people can try it out at any time we're entirely open source um we're Creative Commons non-commercial so before our code you know use it for whatever you want if you're you know an angel and you really want to find your

23:14way into our hearts like submit a pull request like add some features um we're totally transparent along the way but for those that aren't uh maybe as tech savvy we will be releasing um downloads to to follow along uh weekly um for the native application so we're getting close um we're actually talking right now at a really exciting time we're kind of like meeting that point

23:35where we finally get to show the world like the things we've been building over the past year and it's really exciting amazing I'm really looking forward to it as well I I will leave the link to the platform and the social media channels if people are interested in talking to the community and learning more in the description box below as well thank you

23:52so much for the insights into you know instant messaging and I'm really looking forward to seeing uh you know satellite grow because I I've been meaning for more uh blockchain you know encryption privacy focused uh and function focused and user experience focused uh instant messaging platforms and I think that this is going to be a great one so thank

24:12you to you and your team for working on this and let's follow up in the near future Matt absolutely and thank you for all the kind words uh hopefully you know next time we chat we'll be chatting on satellite be pretty exciting amazing looking forward to it thank you so much thank you