Decentralized Messaging Just Forked Four Ways

Messaging isn’t broken because of encryption. It’s broken because no one can prove who’s on the other side.

Spam, scams, and impersonation because every “encrypted” app still depends on centralized identity. Phone numbers, emails, usernames. The same systems that made spam a trillion-dollar industry now anchor your private chats.

A new wave of decentralized messengers wants to fix that. But it’s already fragmenting.

Right now, four different philosophies are battling to define “trust” in the next generation of messaging.

DID-based agents: trust built in

A serious effort is happening around DIDComm, a messaging protocol from the Decentralized Identity Foundation. It’s not a chat app. It’s a framework where messages carry cryptographic proof of identity, not a phone number or email.

DIDComm v2.1 formalizes this idea: secure, encrypted, and transport-agnostic messages exchanged between agents, within wallets, servers, or IoT devices, each anchored to a Decentralized Identifier (DID).

It’s programmable trust. Machines and humans can exchange verified credentials in real time. A supplier can prove a shipment is certified. A user can verify a customer support agent without revealing their ID card.

The downside: UX. DIDComm is infrastructure. Most people won’t see it; they’ll feel it… if developers get it right.

Wallet messaging: your address is your inbox

The second camp lives inside wallets. XMTP is doing great work here. Your crypto address doubles as a messaging endpoint. Coinbase Wallet now supports XMTP chats, pushing the idea of “wallet = identity = communication channel.”

Wallet-based messaging fits perfectly for Web3 commerce. You can receive DAO votes, marketplace updates, or direct messages tied to verified wallets. You know the sender because their address and on-chain record prove it.

It’s not free from issues. Spam and Sybil attacks follow open systems. But the framework makes portable identity possible. You can leave one app and take your chat history and reputation with you.

P2P relays: censorship-proof, messy, alive

Waku, Nostr, and SimpleX occupy the third camp: decentralized relays and gossip networks. These protocols trade convenience for censorship resistance.

Waku v2 is a cleaned-up successor to Whisper. It stores, forwards, and routes messages across peers with no servers, and no central discovery. Nostr’s new NIP-17 spec adds encrypted DMs to its social relay system. SimpleX leans even harder on privacy, routing messages through one-time relays and Tor channels.

It’s the purest form of decentralization, and as such the hardest to scale. No account recovery, no global discovery, and little spam control. These networks will matter most where freedom matters most.

MLS and the RCS landgrab

While the crypto world argues about decentralization, the telecom giants are quietly shipping end-to-end encryption to billions.

The Message Layer Security (MLS) protocol, an IETF standard, will soon power RCS, the default chat layer across Android and iOS. Apple finally joined Google and the GSMA alliance to support it.

This isn’t decentralized, but it’s historic. MLS brings group E2EE to carrier messaging for the first time. Billions of phones will suddenly be encrypted by default.

What it doesn’t solve: identity and portability. Your phone number remains your passport. You can’t take your reputation with you when you switch apps.

The X factor

Then there’s X.

After killing off its previous encryption scheme, Elon Musk’s platform is rebuilding DMs as “XChat.” The marketing talks about “Bitcoin-style encryption.” The code doesn’t.

It’s not decentralized. It’s still a closed, centralized system with an uncertain cryptographic base. The value lies in the user base, not the trust model.

X proves a point: big platforms can bolt on crypto, but they can’t decentralize identity. The DNA doesn’t match.

The next layer: identity, reputation, portability

Every messaging system now faces the same three questions:

1. Who are you?: Centralized apps rely on phone numbers. Decentralized systems use DIDs and verifiable credentials.
2. Can I trust you?: That’s the spam problem. Without portable reputation, decentralized networks drown in noise. Systems like Orange Protocol can assign on-chain reputation scores that follow you across apps. Good behavior and bad.
3. Can I leave?: Real decentralization means you can take your messages, graph, and identity elsewhere. Wallet-based and DID-based protocols are getting close.

How Ontology fits

Ontology has spent years building the rails for these questions.

• ONT ID gives users a verifiable, self-controlled digital identity.
• Orange Protocol builds portable reputation and trust scoring across platforms.
• ONTO Wallet connects both: a messenger, identity agent, and asset hub in one.
• Ontology Network provides the reliable and low-cost infrastructure, designed for identity-centric use.

Reality check

Decentralized messaging isn’t utopia.

Matrix, the biggest federated network, recently broke compatibility to fix protocol-level flaws. Privacy-first tools like SimpleX attract both activists and abuse. Wallet UX remains fragile.

Still, the direction is clear. The next messaging war won’t be fought over stickers or features. It’ll be fought over trust without dependency.

The takeaway

Encryption is table stakes.

Identity and reputation are the new moat.

The protocol that nails both, without locking you in, wins.

And when that happens, messaging stops being an app.

It becomes an ecosystem of verifiable relationships.

That’s the real revolution.

Decentralized Messaging Just Forked Four Ways was originally published in OntologyNetwork on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.