Comm, a Web 3.0 messaging app, has successfully raised a $5 million seed round, which was led by CoinFund, in an attempt to compete with Discord. To that end, the company hopes that it can provide a revolutionary new messaging and communication experience for the Web 3.0 era.
Comm may hence best be defined as a consumer privacy startup that works on scaling E2E (End-to-End) encryption, which is currently only available for chat-based applications like Signal or Whatsapp, with the goal of eventually replacing centralized backends.
Why does this matter?
Comms founder and CEO, Ashoat Tevosyan, stated that he wanted to create an application which was truly independent, end-to-end encrypted, secure, and private. There has since been plenty of interest in what Comm is trying to achieve, with Electric Capital, Shima Capital, LongHash VC, Slow Ventures, and Eniac Ventures being among the various investors in the aforementioned seed round.
Comm is therefore being designed in such a way that community members will host their own backend servers and that only users would be allowed access to their data. Moreover, the keyserver software is open source and was designed to be forked, which means it was meant to be copied and implemented by various other compatible projects.
But is it safe?
While encrypted messaging and communication-based applications can help protect personal information, many of them have unfortunately fallen into the hands of fraudulent entities like gangs, hackers, and organized criminals.
According to Tevosyan, whether or not Comm exists, criminals will undoubtedly always find a way to access online networks. As a result, his team is developing software that puts the user in control and prioritizes safety. In any case, the CEO wants Comm to be a software which actively supports larger communities and is thus skeptical of the notion that a large-scale social platform would only attract undesirable characters.
What about future goals?
The founders long-term goal for the company is still unclear. Users will be able to log in to Comm using their cryptocurrency wallets, which will reportedly control their overall identity in the application. However, it is not yet known as to which blockchains would be supported. Despite this, Tevosyan stated that he intends to expand his team in New York City after the raise, with a few employees working remotely, and that Comm certainly has a place in Web 3.0 even if it will take some time for all of the details to be ironed out.