The project
Status is lowkey on the scene and that’s the way to get things done. You may have not even heard of them, but have seen them moving up the rank on CMC but didn’t take a deeper look. The project has been around for just shy of three years launching their ICO in June 2017. Status Mobile or Status Research & Development GmbH, the owner and data controller formally speaking, is a market research company and an open source project with active communities ranging across the world on all continents contributing to the project.
Status Mobile is an open-source messaging platform that allows you to interact with dapps. The project stands for everything crypto does itself, liberty, openness, privacy, transparency, censorship resistance and decentralization.
The token
The token that fuels the platform is SNT, this is an ERC-20 based token and runs on the Ξthereum blockchain. SNT is used on the network to incentive users to run nodes.
They are working on at the moment users to become sellers on the network in order for fiat to crypto transactions, the SNT token is required to become a seller. Also like in many apps where you can send stickers, they can be purchased, sold and designed on the Status Mobile platform. SNT is required to buy stickers.
Users can also use their SNT to reserve ENS (Ethereum Name Server) names within the app. It is currently 10 SNT to reserve a name for up to a year. Names can be let go at the end of the years term and your 10 SNT will be returned or you can hold onto the name longer holding up the 10 SNT. With the ENS names you can have people send crypto directly to the name in place of your wallet address just like an Unstoppable Domain.
To avoid spam and cold contact messaging like telegram has, the team designed a way where you make people outside your network put up some SNT to communicate with you. This option is for stake holders and still in development.
These are just a few use cases. You can definitely check out their site more for that. We are going to talk privacy and security mostly.
example from the site of a ENS name.
Identity
When you sign up to Status Mobile you are going to receive your private key and be prompted to generate a password. You can add information to your file as you like or choose to remain anonymous or as public as you like switching back between the two. Users then have the option to put up 10 SNT in order to reserve an ENS name for one year as previously stated. This comes in hand and brings utility to the token where users can receive tokens at that name, be searched for in the web3 browser, wallet and chats to locate the individual. Also useful if you conduct business and want to have the ENS in your business name for facility of payments within the app.
You will notice upon signing up there is no trace of identity as it is serverless. This means no email or third party verification. 2FA and password recovery are not an available function in the Status Mobile dapp. Your private and public keys are your identity. Make sure that you store your mnemonic phrase and private key offline in a safe place.
Private key safety
Your keys are stored in a .json file on your device and is encrypted with the password you had chosen for the dapp. You can also store the private key in the open source keycard hardwallet
Whisper
Whisper is an identity based pseudonymous p2p messaging protocol. The protocol is serverless and uses a “dark routing” mechanism where everything message is shown to the whole network. Sounds intransparent but it is rather not. Even though each message is being shown to the whole network, none of your metadata, the contents of the messages, where and from you are communicating and to whom are leaked out.
With this in mind when you created your account you were given a cryptographic keypair to encrypt your messages. This is a combination of private and public keys and encrypts your transmissions over the network
When adding a contact in the dapp public keys are exchanged in order for you to be able to decrypt eachothers messages, therefore nobody else will be able to decrypt your messages or read them unless they have accesss to your phone and your password to log in.
ÐΞVp2p protocol
Whisper which is built on Ethereums ÐΞVp2p protocol. The protocol is a communication between nodes on the blockchain for a simple explanation. The nodes on the network are the transmitters of all communications. If you would like an in depth look at the protocol please read here.
In dapp web3 browser
The browser within the app is automatically set to private and third party apps must ask for permission in order to connect to your wallet;. The in dapp browser also uses EIP712. EIP712 is an Ethereum typed structured data hashing and signing that helps with off-chain message signing for use on-chain. This feature helps blockchains reduce gas and congestion of tx’s on the blockchain. Below are two examples of message signing for you to get a visual from metamask. Here is an article explaining EIP712.
