Communications Startup Dialect Issues Tech Specs for ‘Smarter Messaging’ in Crypto

Web3 messaging startup Dialect is rolling out tech specs to help crypto projects communicate between themselves, an effort the Solana-focused company hopes will morph into a standard for the industry.

Dialect is calling it a “smart messaging specification” that’s already captured the interest of 50 fellow startups, CEO Chris Osborn told CoinDesk. Starting Saturday, they (and anyone, really) can check out Dialect’s open-source codebase to begin building integrations themselves.

The tech is built on the foundations of Solana Labs’ payment infrastructure, though it doesn’t move tokens or value about. Instead, it moves actionable notifications. Little email-like pop-ups with a “call to action” hook that let the recipient do the thing – whatever that thing is – right then and there.

In an interview at the Solana Breakpoint conference in Lisbon, Osborn gave the example of a musician orchestrating a non-fungible token (NFT) mint via her own distribution platform. Let’s say (under the current tech landscape) her fans receive an email blast alerting them the mint window has opened. But: they have to click through to a different link, hook in their wallet, press the button – do the thing. With Dialect’s smart messaging standard she could set up the initial notification to include the mechanism for them to simply execute the mint.

“We carry our wallet between every dapp, NFT, [decentralized finance] protocol – everything we do in crypto, we’re authenticating in the same way,” Osborn said.