Overview of Towns, a social protocol led by a16z: a decentralized version of Discord
Towns is based on the Ethereum network and is currently in the testing phase.Author: Nianqing, ChainCatcher
Yesterday, Here Not There Labs, the company developing the Web3 social protocol Towns, announced the completion of a $25.5 million funding round, led by a16z, with participation from Benchmark and Framework Ventures. This marks a16z's first foray into the decentralized social space following the explosive popularity of the decentralized protocol Nostr.
Towns is a decentralized group chat protocol and open-source application. According to a16z, Towns allows members to customize settings and manage private spaces supported by fully decentralized, end-to-end encryption.
Currently, the Towns application is still in the testing phase, and users need to fill out an application on the official website to gain trial access. According to the publicly available information, from a UI perspective, Towns resembles a decentralized version of Discord, but unlike Discord's "public gathering place" positioning, Towns appears to focus more on the concept of "circles," with its slogan promoting the creation of one's own "hometown" on the internet. Additionally, Towns features high openness and composability, with future positioning aimed at building more Web3 ecosystems around social interactions, such as NFT trading, DAO governance, and more.
According to its official website, Towns is based on the Ethereum network and is designed as a group chat protocol and application specifically for online communities, allowing community members to truly own their town square and communicate freely through a fully decentralized, end-to-end encrypted chat protocol. Its design is highly composable, enabling users to deploy their own smart contracts and create personalized spaces based on their needs.
How will Towns operate?
Towns consists of three key components:
1. Protocol
- Composable Smart Contracts: Towns is an Ethereum-based smart contract system, where contracts are extensible, composable, and upgradable, allowing communities to write their own rules for auditing, access, and monetization.
- Decentralized Network: Towns is an end-to-end, real-time encrypted communication system managed by Towns smart contracts and supported by decentralized distributed proof-of-stake network nodes.
2. Application
Towns is tightly integrated with the Web3 ecosystem directly within the application, allowing participation in DAO governance, interaction in on-chain games, or trading NFTs, among other activities. It is reported that the current Towns application is just one of many applications based on its social protocol, with more applications expected to emerge from the protocol in the future.
3. DAO
Towns will be managed by the Towns DAO, which will serve as the core organization for the long-term support and growth of the protocol. The DAO will make important decisions for the platform, such as voting on the core development roadmap, technical upgrades, and managing the treasury. The DAO will represent the main stakeholder groups within the Towns ecosystem, including users, node operators, space owners, and core contributors.
Next, let's take a closer look at the upcoming social application from Towns------
In the image above, we can see that Towns, like Discord, allows users to create different spaces, different channels within those spaces, and roles and permissions for each member. However, Towns has its own decentralized style, with group addresses resembling Nostr, represented as a string of public keys. Therefore, users do not need to register through a domain name or social account; instead, a pair of public and private keys is automatically created upon registration.
Towns is based on the Olm and Megolm protocols used in the Matrix ecosystem. Matrix is an open standard for interoperable, decentralized real-time communication over IP. Similar to Nostr, each user needs to connect to a server and create spaces on each server, allowing them to chat with anyone on any server. Users can host their own servers and control all data. Every message sent in a space is synchronized across all servers participating in that space.
Currently, there are dozens of social applications based on the Matrix protocol. Although Towns is not yet available, you can explore other applications based on the same protocol.
The Team Behind Towns: Here Not There Labs
Here Not There Labs was founded by Ben Rubin and Brian Meek. Ben Rubin, as co-founder and CEO, previously worked on two social products: Houseparty and Meerkat, while Brian Meek is the former CTO of STRIVR Labs and former engineering general manager at Skype, having also worked at Microsoft for many years.
Sriram Krishnan from a16z even stated that when investing in Here Not There Labs, there was no need to understand their products in depth, as the two applications previously developed by Ben Rubin pioneered mobile live streaming and group video chatting.
Here Not There Labs also emphasizes that while Towns will initially be managed by the studio, as the network moves towards decentralization, the governance and control of Towns will gradually transition to the Towns DAO.
a16z's Investments in the Social Space
According to RootData data, a16z has made over a dozen investments in the social space, including Fanhouse, Farcaster, Syndicate, DESO, PLAI Labs, and more. A closer look reveals that these social platforms cover various aspects such as fan socializing, gaming socializing, online communities, and content subscriptions.
Fanhouse is a content subscription service that allows creators' "fans" or consumers to pay for content. Users can interact with fans through easily accessible channels, monetizing their influence.
Farcaster is a Web3 social network developed by former Coinbase employees. It is a foundational application protocol for building decentralized social networks, supporting developers in creating various applications on the protocol, and allowing users to freely migrate social resources and identities between different applications. It aims to establish direct relationships between users and fans without relying on any intermediary platform. The functionality of Farcaster applications is similar to Twitter, where users can post content, comment, and receive notifications.
DeSo is a Layer1 blockchain customized for scaling decentralized social applications, built on the underlying technology of BitClout, aiming to create a decentralized version of Twitter. DeSo offers greater scale and throughput compared to other blockchains, with extensive customizable storage and indexing logic, better supporting complex social media data such as posts, user profiles, followers, predictions, etc. All code is open source.
Mem is building a decentralized social media protocol centered around data sovereignty. Users can own their friend graphs, explore the blockchain, and earn rewards by sharing knowledge. With the power of reputation and smart contracts, individuals can take real-world actions using their identities, such as asking questions, pooling funds for bounties, and establishing their own verifiable, context-specific reputations. Developers can embed Mem into their applications to provide a more personalized web experience.
PLAI Labs focuses on leveraging AI and web3 to build the next generation of social platforms, striving to lower the entry barrier for new Web3 users through entertainment, social engagement, and digital ownership. Its first product is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game called Champions Ascension, where players can transplant existing NFT characters into the game. PLAI Labs is also building an AI protocol platform that will help users match UGC content to 2D and 3D rendered content.
