To Infinity and Beyond: The near future of blockchain communication
Hey DEFI WORLD community,
have you ever wondered why you don’t receive a notification when your Maker
collateralization ration gets too low?
What if you want to be notified about everything that is going on with your funds in
real time? Ethereum Push Notification Service (EPNS) is your answer!
This article is written by Harsh Rajat, founder and Project Lead at EPNS. Read how
he thinks the future of DeFi notifications will look like!
You will definitely enjoy this piece!
Don’t forget to follow them on Twitter!
The tech world changes quickly, not back to the future quick, but quick nevertheless. Just a decade ago, you carried your iPod to listen to music, you carried a phone for calls and messages and the lucky few had access to basic internet on the phone via WAP; not kidding, that was an actual protocol meant to display basic mobile websites. It seems ancient so much, that people forget how fast we have moved.
But that’s tech, and while it moves fast, it’s not where as quick as the jumps blockchains takes; a week in blockchain is a year in the normal world. The invention of blockchain gave people machine economy that’s tangible and verifiable! This magic internet money is, for the first time in history, a form of money that’s verifiable and truly fixed. Paper money can be made, additional gold can be found, but one Doge will always be one Doge (Bitcoin or Ethereum might be more apt but I can’t resist).
As history has shown, humans are brilliant in innovating and while it stated with magic internet money, we have already sprung up and created a variety of use cases ranging from DeFi, DAO, Gaming, NFTs and services that are better, transparent and in some cases really not possible with traditional (web 2.0) services (cough… flash loans.. cough). But, with any early tech, there are challenges which needs to be taken care of like speed, scalability, security or notifications, which would ensure the barriers between the early adapters and users who just want a better experience to be achieved.
From all the challenges above, no one really tried to address notifications, which are as a basic necessity for all dApps, smart contracts and web3 services. This is where we, Ethereum Push Notification Service (EPNS), fit in. We are building decentralized, platform agnostic (capable of reaching user wallets, mobile, browsers, etc), incentivized notifications (users earns from receiving notifications). The stone age era of communication in blockchain needs to go! You are not foreclosed by your bank without proper notices that reach you, but DeFi, while enabling awesome use cases, does that to you so often. Of course, some can just quote Steve Jobs and say “You are doing it wrong!”, or we as web 3.0 community can adapt, improvise and overcome!!!
Adapt, Improvise and Overcome! (Year 2022)
It’s 2022, DeFi is the new banking standard, while crypto hasn’t replaced paper money, it is now widely used, sometimes exclusively, just like the innovation of plastic money over paper. Crypto is treated as the new way to operate!
You get up from your bed and get a notification telling you that your loan is reaching a critical limit. You tap on the notification, send some funds in and you are all good to begin your day. That’s all you needed to do instead of any paperwork or contacting your bank, telling them to process your application and relying on them for critical banking services… in fact, most of the banks now have their own protocols and realize they need to join in, as it saves them time and repetitive tasks that can now just be smart contract controlled.
You move along the rest of the morning, sit to work and have an upcoming video meeting. Your company moved to a decentralized video meeting and a notification pops up for the meeting, unlike a Google or Zoom video. This is peer to peer encrypted video chat. Your company moved to decentralized videos because they do not want to be trapped in web 2.0 ecosystem, where every enterprise sells them something cheap, in order to sell them something expensive later on. They have embraced web 3.0, where your data stays with you and moves along with you.
However, you are just glad that you don’t need to have another app for that; most web3 services have moved to the EPNS decentralized notification protocol and user wallets can notify you about important alerts, including the video call. You tap on it and it connects you to the p2p video platform. Here, you greet your co-workers, who are global and surprise. They let you know that your blockchain game’s new auction feature for characters are ready! Yes, you are a blockchain gaming entrepreneur. You noticed that this auction is as good as players getting to know about the characters, especially the legendary and epic ones. You quickly brainstorm and settle to send a notification for it out! After all, it seems weird that two years back, decentralized notifications didn’t exists, of course, no one has really heard of an auction that is an open house, without an RSVP or an alert informing interested customer. You wonder how or why it took so long, but you are happy to have user engagement and retention like web 2.0 which is now moving to web 3.0.
Some quick meetings later, you are all laid out and a notification comes from UTube, which has now become decentralized and have now reluctantly started sharing revenue with users as dTube, a web3 video content platform is instant hit with users and content owners alike because of their revenue share and a DAO running the profit split. This UTube notification informs you about their own DAO and that they have initiated the vote to cut their ad revenue fees by half and would instead share that with users. However, you are not satisfied with UTube policies, but at least it’s a start!
You quickly remember that EPNS protocol have incentivized notifications and you have a passive income from receiving those notifications... WooHoo!! Now, you go to Twitter to like us but contemplate if this is what you wanted or a person writing a story is forcing you to do so. You want to think a bit more, before giving us that like so you hop on to Reddit, which is the first platform to have embraced decentralization. Just at that point of time, a notification pops in from your favorite user wallet. They have incorporated our protocol and have moved a proposal to get 40% of the revenue reserved for user wallets to be perpetually allocated to them. What’s more, this notification is an encrypted transaction so you can just tap it and your vote will be casted at a single tap! You love it! EPNS protocol is doing fantastic since the last time you moved a proposal to change the fee share through governance!
It’s time to give us the like, even if your actions feel somehow guided by an invisible author, but you don’t care as it seems that blockchain communication issue is solved and even figured out monetization of user wallets as a byproduct! What’s more, it couldn’t have been done without your participation. The world is finally creating a shared subconscious that creates win-win scenario for everyone and it all started with your proposal!
All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.