If the future is blockchain then the decentralized messenger apps are the messengers of tomorrow.
Sense Chat is one of the numerous interesting dApps built on top of the EOS blockchain. This messenger supports smart contracts providing private connections leaving no identity data anywhere (but users can share their identities on purpose). Sense Chat uses no centralized server so the communication is truly peer-to-peer. The digital assets can be sent/received or earned within the dApp.
Functionality
Sense supports the following features: peer-to-peer text and video messages, the inbuilt wallet supporting both SNS (the Sense token) and EOS (the EOS blockchain token). These tokens can be stored, sent, received, and earned.
What Is Special About Sense Chat?
One might say that the functionality is quite similar to the messengers we know for years, but the fact that Sense is decentralized blockchain-based application makes it different. During Live Chat or video calls, the participants interact directly without the intermediary of the central server. All the data is kept only on the users' devices right until the end of the LiveChat session. When the session is finished the data gets totally erased. The lack of the intermediary makes the connection faster and safer because users talk really privately like if they were sitting in front of each other without the presence of bystanders so no one can snoop and collect the data of participants. The data isn't stored anywhere. That's something that centralized apps cannot guarantee.
Centralized apps care about privacy, too. They use encryption to protect the users' data. What makes this approach not fully efficient is the fact that the encrypted data is stored by the companies and can be eventually decrypted and passed to the third party.
The only identifying data that is used in Sense Chat is the user's EOS wallet. In some sense, this messenger is the way to communicate via the wallet without using the information such as your phone number, email address, etc.
So the scandalous events like the censorship (e.g. the ban of all crypto-related accounts by WeChat) or the storing of users' data (e.g. deleted messages from WeChat that appeared to be available to the government) are simply technically impossible.
How Does Sense Chat Utilizes Smart Contracts?
Smart contracts exclusively list the connections the user makes via Sense Chat. Each contract is associated with one public key (or account name). The content of the smart contract is kept on the user's device only.
Creating EOS Account Is Not Free. How Ba Dat?
One of the biggest hurdles for EOS adoption and dApps is account creation. EOS account creation on dApps holds a cost for consumers. To remedy this, Sense will create EOS accounts from our community allocation pool at no cost to the user, for a limited time until the cost of account creation is lower or free.
Sense doesn't force anyone to pay for the creation of EOS account so they came up with the solution. So the potential Sense users can use one of the EOS accounts from the Sense community allocation pool. These accounts are free and can be used for a while until the cost of EOS accounts drops or gets eliminated completely.
SNS Token
SNS and EOS tokens or digital assets can be stored in the in-built wallets and sent while chatting.
Resume
Sense is the first EOS-based messenger, and it has all the advantages of EOS such as high security, privacy, and lightning-like speed. These qualities are exactly what usually people need from messengers. The Beta testing is over, so now we are waiting for the fully operational version. I think this messenger has its place in the future.