TL;DR: Joel Dalais, longtime operator of the MetanetICU discussion group, has built NexusNode: a chat and messaging app where every post is encrypted and written to BSV blockchain instead of a company server. It lends itself to a suite of interconnected apps, including the Link wallet, a tokenized marketplace, and a crowdfunding and profit-sharing tool. Posts cost a small fraction of a cent in sats, which keeps out spam and scammers, and channel history can be recalled in full even years later. It is not trying to be an anonymous darkweb chat, but it offers a level of privacy and permanence that the commercial platforms do not.
Key Takeaways
The MetanetICU discussion group has existed as long as Bitcoin SV’s name has, first on its own server and later on Slack. The group’s subscription model, according to creator Joel Dalais, is simple: charge for membership and you get better conversation from people who actually care. There are far fewer trolls, spammers, and scammers wandering in from outside.
Dalais recently built that philosophy into custom software. NexusNode is a chat and messaging app where every post is encrypted for privacy and written to BSV blockchain. There are no Nexus servers, no ads, and no company inbox that can vanish overnight.
“Bitcoin is more than money; the foundation to all this is Bitcoin,” he told CoinGeek. “Treat it as an information layer and not just money, and it opens up.”
Serverless chat, with a wallet at the front door
NexusNode can run with only a Link, but lends itself to a suite of interconnected apps. Link, a non-custodial BIP39 wallet for Windows, handles logins, transactions, and balances, and can be used on its own for sending BSV or 1Sat Ordinals. A paymail address doubles as your username. NexusNode itself is the chat app, and complementing it are two other independent apps: Treasury, a tokenized crowdfunding and profit-sharing mechanism, and Nexus Emporium, a marketplace for tokenized assets.
The chat will feel familiar to anyone who has used IRC or ICQ, with modern expectations and economic incentives included. There are profiles, channels, contacts, direct messages, and threads. The difference is that the app substitutes the blockchain for a server. Each post costs 1,000 sats (plus the miner’s fee)—a small fraction of a cent—which also serves as a spam filter. Scammers and trolls tend to lose interest when every message has a price tag, however small.
The on-chain model brings some additional and unusual perks. Join a channel, and you can recall its full message history, even ten years’ worth (or even over a hundred), since it’s all on-chain. And if you prefer not to do a channel recall on a long-lived channel, you can download the message cache as a file instead. Channel admin rights can be claimed by anyone for a fee if no admin already exists, and admins can kick or block members. The apps are themeable, multiple interface languages are planned, and the whole thing reads the chain through Oracle, an indexer Dalais built himself, though users can swap in an alternate indexer like WhatsOnChain or JungleBus, if they prefer.
Why not just use Slack?
Dalais’s suite and economic model is aimed squarely at the commercial platforms. If you’re not paying for the product, as the saying goes, you are the product: they hold more of your personal data than just your posts, can share it with authorities, and their servers can be hacked. Their policies can also change at any time. Slack, for example, will wipe your history if a group drops from a paid plan to free (even if it later returns to paid status). And it is far more expensive, with baseline fees for admins that get passed on to members. Dalais puts the comparison at pennies a month versus ten pounds.
He is also blunt about what NexusNode isn’t. It offers a level of privacy well above the commercial alternatives, but it’s not intended for anonymous or darkweb chat. Though channels can be locked to prevent entry in the first place, your chat doesn’t disappear. It’s on-chain forever, transactions can be traced, so it’s not a good tool for criminals.
Markets and money, minus the middlemen
The two other applications extend the same serverless logic to commerce. Nexus Emporium is a marketplace with no logins and no custody: users mint 1Sat Ordinal tokens, list them, and trade via atomic swaps, in which each party signs half of the transaction, and both sides settle simultaneously. There is no escrow and no third party, and as Dalais pointed out, nothing for a hacker to attack except each individual user.
Treasury handles crowdfunding and profit-sharing. A project can raise money and share profits with its token holders, dividend-style, with transparency as the selling point: snapshots of all holders, all transactions, and all payouts are visible, and a preview tab shows the split before anything is sent. Listing costs 0.01 BSV; payouts incur the same small fee, and the funds go toward software development. Payouts and fees are done automatically via the users’ connected Link wallet.
“I want to provide a way for people to have projects, raise money, chat about it, and build,” Dalais said.
Dalais plans to move the entire MetanetICU channel history across to NexusNode, and he is open to building bespoke versions for businesses that want their own complete app rather than a channel on the open one. More components are coming, he said, describing NexusNode as “just the tip of the iceberg of things I’m releasing in the coming months. And not your usual ‘upload XYZ to the blockchain.’”
FAQs
What is NexusNode?
NexusNode is an on-chain chat and messaging app for BSV built by developer Joel Dalais. All messages are encrypted and written to the BSV blockchain rather than stored on company servers. It works with the Link wallet and two other independent apps: the Nexus Emporium marketplace and the Treasury crowdfunding tool.
Is NexusNode free to use?
NexusNode has no subscription fees to a company, but each post costs 1,000 sats plus the miner’s fee—a small fraction of a cent. Channel operators can also charge for membership or admin rights. Dalais says this economic model keeps out spam, scammers, and trolls.
What is the Link wallet?
Link is a non-custodial BIP39 wallet for Windows that accompanies NexusNode. It handles logins, transactions, and balances, and can create or send BSV and 1Sat Ordinals. It can be downloaded and used on its own, but NexusNode requires it.
Can you see old messages when you join a NexusNode channel?
Yes. Because all messages are stored on-chain, new channel members can recall the full history of a channel, even decades worth of posts. Users can also download the message cache as a file instead of loading it into the chat.
Is NexusNode anonymous chat?
No. Dalais says NexusNode offers a level of privacy above commercial messaging platforms, but messages stay on-chain forever and transactions can be traced, so it is not intended as darkweb or anonymous chat.
What are Nexus Emporium and Treasury?
Nexus Emporium is a serverless marketplace where users mint and trade 1Sat Ordinal tokens via atomic swaps with no escrow or third party. Treasury is a crowdfunding and profit-sharing mechanism that lets projects raise money and pay token holders dividend-style, with all holders, transactions, and payouts publicly visible.
Watch: BSV standards and developer empowerment at AWS Summit
Be the first to comment