Why push notifications matter for Web3 users, with Harsh Rajat

0:01it's Ashton from the cryptocoin show and today on blockchain interviews we have harsh rajat co-founder of push protocol back on the show harsh it's great to see you again hey Aston um it's amazing to be here thanks for having me you're very welcome and it's a very exciting time in in crypto for q1 2024 uh push protocol is making a huge amount of updates uh

0:25which I feel like are in perfect alignment with just the growth of web to uh the greater ecosphere of messaging people that were in web to and the millions of users that are to come in uh they're going to need something like this so I'm excited to dive into push protocol for those who are familiar and all the latest updates on what you and your team have been working on I would

0:46love to just kick off the conversation together with just a high level overview on on what you and your team have built and this mission and vision that it serves with push protocol and then we'll dive into all the latest of course of course so uh push protocol uh what what is push push is essentially a decentralized communication middle bear uh think about

1:09it like that like whenever you are in web right uh even if you are uh doing anything in web3 that is sending money from one we wallet to the other whether it's interacting with a D5 protocol whether it's governance whether it's L2 to L1 uh whether it's web3 socials or anything in B uh you are usual what what you can identify yourself as is just a wallet address and this wallet address

1:37is what is interacting with the protocol uh now once you realize this uh Synergy or this uh uh meaning that this wallet address is basically a web username right uh then you kind of know that uh the protocol only knows about your web username or your wallet address so if your loan is about to expire or your if your governance is about about to or if

2:02you participate in a governance forum and you know a vote is required or a L2 to L1 challenge comes in uh all of it uh is only Guided by the wallet address and what Bush enables is essentially communication to that wallet address uh by making sure that uh this protocol can now send notification whether it's on CH or offchain and also chat or audio and

2:27video uh calling uh which are now tied to this wallet address and because this is done uh from Bush noes that are validator and indexer noes and this is done uh as a open and secure network uh any crypto wallet or any crypto app can now tap into this communication uh for example metamask push snap or Unstoppable app and can show these notifications or this uh uh chat or this

2:55audio and video experience right to you as a user uh just by the number uh I think we have sent uh over 65 million notifications uh uh to around 165,000 subscribers uh uh we are live on polygon BNB and uh ethereum uh with more chains coming uh in q1 itself the vision is that push is going to be this the factor communication layer for web3 uh and yeah

3:24we worked with around 700 plus protocols including the likes of shape shift dydx the centraland polygon gitcoin and so wow that's incredible and 700 protocols oh my gosh the the blockchain industry is is definitely growing and I feel like this notion of notifications obviously is super important most people when they're looking at their phone they live

3:49off of the push notifications that come from the top of their phone um but in blockchain and and which is probably more important than some of the notifications people are getting uh you know from the apps on their phone there there's barely any communication you know you have to check how do you manage all these positions and how do you check to make sure thing there a lot of things

4:11need to be done in a timely manner as well how do you get that message system right right so exactly this is the thing this is why we invented notifications uh back in 2020 like before this uh communication uh uh sector didn't exist uh but that was a point like what's the first thing that you do uh when you wake up you look at your phone and you have all these web2

4:34apps sending you things that might be important for you right whether it's Amazon delivery whether it's your Gmail whether it's slack even anything you do on social or anything you do on gaming uh basically notifications is the way by which apps re-engage the user and that's how we basically have adopted our lifestyle so whatever we are doing we usually doing it by notific a like this

5:01meeting is most probably a notification to you and to me from Google Calendar and that's why we are here and that is what push wanted to do in web3 space uh we kind of realized that this can only happen if wallet addresses can have native communication functionality and that's what Bush built out uh but yeah you are exactly bang on that's why we started with notification but then if

5:26you take it a step further like look at whatsapp so what WhatApp is basically chatting but you're not chatting as much as you're chatting by notification and that's what push also did so once notification were done we built this chat protocol on top of it uh that allowed wallets to kind of chat with each other and then we took it a step further by making sure that you can

5:50create this gated group experience uh for your wallets wherein you can also specify that if your wallet has some onchain data or on chain personality only then they are part of this group chat we call this gated group chat and that's uh something that got recently uh adopted by Unstoppable and yeah we are very excited about it because now uh you can create GED group chats wherein if

6:15you have X amount of token then you're part of one Community or Y amount of token then you can send a message or if you have any amount of nfds or whatever composable features you want you can just Define that in this group chat and uh if your wallet kind of justifies all these conditions then you are part of the group so we call this like this Community Driven or different game

6:39theories by which communities and Dows and nfts and so many other uh uh segments uh of the web3 word can now have uh this gated chat experience uh whether you are a webt wh you can now chat with all the webt Ws or if you are a polygon holder you can chat with polygon if you hold a Ste then you can create a gated group around that and so many other possibilities mhm that's a

7:06really nice touch to a group chat not just for making you know a VIP chat for example but to reduce spam and just noise uh being able to have a chat where hey you just need to have $2 of our token to get into the token related chat so of filters out the the the lowquality people even if it's just a small amount um and I actually saw that update with

7:34the Unstoppable domains in in the recent PR so does that work through any chat or is it specific to you know how is this being built out do you do you can you use it through Telegram and Discord or through the web 3 push chat how exactly can you make these token gated chats sure so you have to use it uh uh via the push chat protocol anyone can use it out uh this gated group chat yeah

8:04Unstoppable adopted it that means this gated group chat is now available for 3.8 million plus UD users uh but anyone can come uh to any of the interfaces like they can come to app. push. org and they can create their group uh they can go to Unstoppable and they can create group uh their group by padges or they can just use uh the protocol at a low level and just create a group and then

8:31using that single line of code they can put that code in their front end and that's about it they can uh start with the gator chat experience and it's not just about the tokens like tokens is of course one of the ways where people can visualize instantly but you can do so many other cool things around it as well right for example let's say you want to

8:53have a chat with just the developers uh then you can token gate that chat based on the PO apps people hold or let's say you want to even take this further and you want something like that if this user follows uh my project on Twitter then only he's part of this chat you can also do that because we are integrated with Guild that can allow you to have

9:17various customizations apart from the token uh gating or the NF gating or the custom gating that we offer uh so yeah in case you want to try this group chat out and you want to create your community or even if you want to create it within your friends you know just go to app. p.org create a group specify the conditions and that's about it you good to go you can then use that snipp it and

9:42Port it anywhere and you have chat available over there that's very cool harsh and developing a uh social messaging system it's it's a is a huge Market obviously the you know comparing it to the web two platforms of WhatsApp and telegram you're looking at billions of users most of the world will be using this how can you keep up uh you know having a token gated function is amazing

10:09uh for for spam but there's also uh trying to fit in other functionality of like what everyday people want to use to make sure that there's a network effect that people that people don't want to leave what they're already on you know what is it going to take for people to migrate into a token gated chat or like a push protocol in web3 Social actually that's that's a very

10:34cool question ashon so we we asked ourselves the same thing right like if you and I we are connected see notification is different like notification there's a pure product Market fit protocol only interact with py wallets and that's where you need notification but with chat we asked ourselves the same question like if you and I are friends why will we not talk

10:57over telegram that than switching to a chat and then me asking your wallet on Telegram and then going and sending your message right that doesn't work and that's when we realize that uh if chat needs to work in web3 it needs to have features that cannot be provided by web2 apps so then we realize that gating makes so much sense because gating on your onchain data that is something that

11:25telegram cannot provide or Discord cannot provide you can definitely have plugins that can give you this web 2.5 feature but they are never going to be that versatile and that is when we said no chat needs to be this community thing wherein people can go ahead and build their Community out they need to have a reason why they want to do a web chat and then we realized and we took this

11:50Vision to Unstoppable also like what do you guys think and they were like this is something that we actually actually need because we have these badges that we give out to web3 Veals or people who have variable things or people who are doing something like they might be active on Unstoppable for 5 years we want all those peoples to come and form those communities and then start talking

12:14around that vision and that's what that's when we realize that for web three chat to work it needs to get all the cool features of web2 and then basically supplement it with web three native things and that's where this gated chart experience came around and that's what we think is going to drive this VY chart out because now you can create communities imagine you can

12:40create communities around your da wherein you know that this chat only has your token holders and they're talking about a proposal you can take it a bit further as well you can assign admins who have more tokens around your Dow and now what you have is this decentralized autonomous group uh where then people can come and go and what they are talking you know that they have skin in

13:04the game and that's a cool new way to unlock a utility of your token as well or utility for your nftd or the way by which you operate on and that's that's where we kind of realize that webt chat it only works if you bring web three features and combine with the web2 uh functionality that's already there uh more than that we also went a step ahead we actually had a major breakthrough in

13:31chat uh which is something that is uh already out in V1 of uh the protocol and the SDK but it will become even better in V2 so in uh the V2 version that we are working uh for our SDK that basically now allows gated groups to have uh uh over 100,000 users or more uh which is quite fantastic right right now V1 allows for 5 to 10,000 that's also

14:00amazing but we do kind of break this barrier and just for context even WhatsApp only allows thousand users in a group and Signal only allows thousand users in a group so now we are talking about this chat which is better than the web2 version and it offers web3 native features and that's the combo that we think is the perfect fit to get communication really activated uh for

14:26all the web3 projects wow that's very cool I I couldn't imagine 100,000 people in in one chat hopefully you know we could token gate it for uh people that have different amount of tokens and and different qualifications because uh that would be pretty crazy but also very impressive especially on the web 3 side where traditionally we've seen that blockchain either was a little bit

14:52slower than web 2 or had some costs involved in it in terms of push protocol in the messaging system the notifications have you managed to sort of streamline the user experience so that you're not going through all of the traditional blockchain approval cost oh it's really expensive to do this notification if we were using no traditional ethereum have you

15:17streamlined all that kind of blockchain stuff to make the adoption easier yes yes we have like uh there's this one uh Vision that we have that we is a Innovation over web2 so we need to learn from web2 practices as well so from GetGo we knew that we don't want to charge user or even the protocol for every notification they send or for every chat they do because that's not

15:45how web2 operates web2 kind of eliminates all the friction that a user might have uh look at YouTube look at uh Gmail look at telegram like chatting is uh nearly free uh until you reach a certain point like your inbox gets full in Vmail and then you charging that's the step we took with bush as well we wanted to make sure that protocols can come and try notifications out and users

16:12can come and chat it out before getting bombarded by he uh you need to pay to try this feature out and that's what we did we kind of devised this push cular economy uh and what what we thought was that we will not charge uh users unless they are buying something which is very very premium like let's say uh premium stickers or uh premium ways to chat so

16:38for users it's almost almost free even for the protocols that want to send notification they just have this minimal fee when they're creating a channel and after that sending notifications is uh currently free no matter how many notifications they want to send but what is happening is that we are also coming up with p p network uh which is coming in Q3 and it kind of Builds on this

17:04concept but it also introduces two key features to the protocol one is this fee pool where in whatever fee we are charging with the users or whatever fee we'll charge for notifications after let's say a protocol has sent x amount of notification that kind of goes into a fee pool and this PE pool gets divided among all the people or all the crypto wallets that have in created push and

17:30all the push token holders so it's kind of like circular where the token holders as well as the crypto wallets benefit from it and when we come to the push Network site which is kind of like this proof of State network uh we are introducing this thing that you have to stake certain amount of push to get access to the API calls that you want to do on the network this kind of prevents

17:55the spam and it also acts like a winwin because the protocol if they are uh let's say sending notifications out or if they are reading something from the network now they have state push and based on that they are getting certain amount of apis uh which works kind of very cool in this ZK type of way uh and it kind of makes the network very secure and it also ensures that there's this

18:21winwin for people who are coming on the network because not only it protects the network now it also makes sure that uh uh the token is getting used to secure and uh ensure that the network cannot be taken down just by dorsing so that's that's some of the cool features that we are working around Bush uh and working around as this business Revenue but all

18:46of it is done in a way where the user doesn't see those frictions M wow that's incredible and that's a big move to build a a blockchain and a network for all of this I feel like it's necessary because it's becoming so big and even if you look at web 2 notifications are the Crux of everything you know without notifications people will probably be lost uh and I think a lot of people are

19:13a little lost when they first get into blockchain because they're trying to figure they're trying to remember everything write it all down there's all these different areas so this is something that needs uh it to upgrade to like the default of everything um so I'm great I I always believe in this fact you know we have to remember that a million devs does not equal a billion

19:35users right uh which basically means that users should not or the owners should not be on the users to learn all these things uh we should make the network and we should make the technology in such a way that the user have least amount of friction and uh I think we are working towards that now with account abstraction coming in with communication coming in uh I think we

20:00are getting there um but yeah uh I 100% agree with the point that the user Journey should be completely seamless and only when they see a when in using something should they be expected to pay for it and I'm guessing the the major Partnerships obviously Unstoppable domains is a huge partnership having millions and millions of users uh and metamask as well having something that

20:30you know it's because the blockchain doesn't have these notifications built in you have to make the Partnerships with the applications to adopt push as the best standard so that people can get the notifications so I feel like making those Partnerships is crucial for your team to grow adoption of the technology yes yes I mean uh the vision for push has been exactly this that

20:53crypto wallets will tap into this network just like they tap into ethereum but when you talk tap into ethereum or Solan or whatever Network you're showing their account and their their finances uh uh to them and when these crypto wallets tap into this communication Network they are getting shown or the users are shown all the activities they have done on their protocol like let's

21:17say if their loan is about to expire or let's say their L2 challenge period has been done or let's say they have been air dropped something uh or the lp pool is earning fees like all of those things can be notified and that is where you know it becomes very interesting because all the features that web 2 provides now web3 provides as well so one of the main

21:40focus for push was to make sure that people don't have to go and let's say install push mobile app or push extension which they can also do and they can get those notifications but or chat but one of the things that we worked towards last year was making sure that we are are able to be adopted by all the major protocols like metamask with push snap or Unstoppable wherein

22:06the user they don't have to go the additional step to get something which we should already deliver to them so now or if they they are the Unstoppable user they can get all the those notifications um if they have opted into those channels uh or if they use metamask na they can just get it on metamask right by just going to metamask and clicking on notifications and we are

22:32not stopping over there I think there couple of other wallets that have already integrated us as well with four or five more wallets going to do that uh in the near future so again there the thing or the vision is that push will work for entire V three and will work with all the wallets and because these wallets are adopting push they will have a part of the fee from the people pool

22:58making this like a win win both for push for the users as well as for the crypto voles incredible harsh well I applaud you and your team for bringing notifications in a in a much needed industry that's moving so fast we need notifications to keep up and uh at least you know with the amount of research that that I'm doing it's it's a lot without notifications so uh I I'm taking

23:23advantage of the push protocol for that um I'm looking forward to the updates for for the push Network that's huge uh and congratulations on the the Unstoppable domains partnership um looking forward to seeing more adoption of people realizing the benefits of integrating this kind of Technology into blockchain um is there any else that you wanted to mention before we

23:46go uh yeah so uh we just launched uh this live road map of us uh at ps.org talks roadmap uh would love people to go and check that out we have some very interesting things planned up uh very excited about push Network we are going to have uh a very first Community call where we are going to explain the network how it works especially the state part wherein you st amount of push

24:15to get access to API call that's amazing so do come and check it out uh the network is scheduled to go live in Q3 uh so cannot wait for it to happen uh but yeah before Q3 in Q2 we'll probably release the test net version of the network and q1 we'll probably do this Alpha demo call uh so yeah very excited around those uh features and would love to invite all of you guys to come and

24:42see how we are building this next area of communication for web3 incredible and I can leave the link to the that road map in the show notes as well as uh the push uh main site and Unstoppable information uh for the token gated chats uh looking forward to following up with with all of this in the near future harsh thank you so much thank you so much for having me Ashen I

25:07really enjoyed it