Subsocial network-based chat app Grill.chat has now implemented Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) wallet compatibility, allowing users to chat using their Ethereum identities and send cryptocurrencies to each other via Polygon, according to a June 7 announcement.
Subsocial is a Polkadot parachain designed for social media applications. Grill.chat allows users to participate in more than 70 chat rooms that focus primarily on crypto-related topics. The development team seeks to attract new Web3 projects to build their commun ities on the platform. The integration means that users can now verify that they are the wallet owner by signing a transaction connecting their Subsocial wallet to their EVM wallet. This prevents them from needing to own SUB tokens in order to donate to other users, and allows them to prove their Ethereum identity to users in the chat room. In the future, the developers plan to use this integration to allow non-fungible token (NFT) collections to be displayed to other users.
In a conversation with Cointelegraph, Subsocial CEO Zachary Edwards stated that Grill.chat has the crypto project as a potential sponsor of the chat room. Currently, many crypto communities are built around Discord servers and Telegram channels. These channels can' t be integrated into the developer's website, which means users need to load a separate program to join or interact with the community, creating friction for users that Edwards considers unnecessary. In contrast, the chat group on Grill.chat can be integrated into the development team's website or app application interface. Edwards gave the example of Zeitgeist, a blockchain-based prediction market application. Its interface has a "chat" icon that opens directly to the Zeitgeist chat room on Grill.chat.
However, use of the app have enCountered from Other Sources BeFore, EDWARDS SAID. AS Ethereum, Polygon, and Avalanche. Cryptocurrency Users are used to use Wallets from thede Networks and Don 't necessarily have to download a new wallet to use chat apps. To partially address this issue, the team implemented a feature that allows users to create a Subsocial wallet directly from the app's interface. They also pay users for gas via a smart contract that can delegate signing privileges for limited functionality.
But this still doesn't quite solve the problem, as it isolates the user's Ethereum identity from their Grill.chat posts. Edwards explained that the team implemented EVM compatibility to make it easier for ethereum users to switch to the application.
“The coolest thing is that it kind of uses this off-chain signer technology because at the end of the day, it’s all running on Substrate [Polkadot parachain technology], and EVM wallets are not compatible with Substrate,” Edwards said. “But we can still link the two accounts together so you can chat on the substrate chain, but your EVM accounts are linked so you can have identities, donations, NFTs, all these things.”
Grill.chat is not the only social media app trying to attract cryptocurrency projects to build communities on it. OpenChat is a chat application on the Internet computer network. Its team told Cointelegraph that they are working on a similar feature to display OpenChat chat rooms on the project website. Web3 companies are racing to create a blockchain-based social media application that will see mass adoption. On April 26, the Polygon-based Lens network announced a new scaling solution that it says will allow for "instant publishing." On the same day, MeWe said it would transfer its 20 million users to Frequency, the Polkadot parachain network.
