EPNS: Push Notifications for Web 3.0
Web 2.0 has monetized attention in a way that is now ubiquitous. Audience engagement drives hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue for tech companies each year. However, companies now struggle and strive for attention supremacy. In 2021, nearly every site you sign-up for and every app you download asks for permission to send you notifications. This is because notifications are proven to drastically increase customer attention. In 2003, Blackberry launched their email push notification service which helped them to quickly gain popularity. Prior to this launch, customers would have to check their email periodically to confirm if they had received any communications. This seems laughable now. It’s obvious to us today that an app or web service should and will reach out when an action is required of us, but we’re quick to forget that Web notifications as we know them weren’t around until early 2015. Similarly, notifications are still entirely lacking in Web 3.0, though it is safe to assume that eventually Web 3.0 will have notifications. The decentralization of Web 3.0 has made it difficult for projects to reach out to their users while increasing the importance of that outreach tenfold. In Web 3.0’s current state users are left to fend for themselves. Traders are often liquidated on Decentralized Exchanges without receiving a notification and DeFi projects release claimable rewards without notifying the claimer. There is a disconnect between services and users. The disconnect is even more exacerbated when it comes to blockchain governance. DAOs and Protocols hold votes on proposals and change key structures without notifying the potential voters or participants. They are in fact unable to notify users. This is a less than optimal system and a problem that the Ethereum Push Notification Services (EPNS) project is attempting to solve. EPNS is a project dedicated to bringing notifications to Web 3.0 and has already seen massive adoption by popular projects.
What is behind EPNS?
Ethereum Push Notification Services is a simple middleware that facilitates push notifications on Web 3.0. EPNS has created the infrastructure to bridge the gap between decentralized and centralized services. This infrastructure is supported by sound tokenomics and incentive structures that are geared to facilitate the rapid growth of EPNS. EPNS is similar to PreSearch in that they require stake to participate in sending notifications to users. They do this so they may enforce their anti-spam rules. In the EPNS ecosystem there are users and channels, users receive notifications and channels send notifications. Notifications are strictly opt-in and may be deactivated by the user anytime. There is a token incentive pool created by channels that incentify users to sign up by sending them $PUSH with every notification they receive. The amount of $PUSH received by the user is a function of the total token incentive pool and the amount of users signed up for that channel. $PUSH sent to users and $PUSH in the token incentive pools both earn staking rewards through fee collection on the EPNS network. On-chain governance was just launched last week and many proposals are in the works. The tokenomics behind $PUSH are now in the users hands and everything I’ve written in the above paragraph is subject to change. EPNS plans to launch their mainnet in late January of 2022.
Who is behind EPNS?
Harsh Rajat and Richa Joshi are the founding members of Ethereum Push Notification Service. Harsh Rajat and Richa Joshi currently hold the Project Lead and Marketing Lead roles, respectively. Rajat has been a software engineer since 2006 and in 2009 he started his own software company called Digital Poke. Richa Joshi has been a software engineer since 2008 when she started working at Citi Bank. Both Rajat and Joshi started EPNS in 2020 after going through Kernel, an incubator run by the Gitcoin project. It was during this incubation process when Vivek Singh and Sandeep Nailwal took interest in EPNS. Singh co-founded Gitcoin and Nailwal is the co-founder and CEO of Polygon. They both were early investors and now sit on the EPNS advisory board. EPNS is also backed by Binance Labs, True Ventures, Fourth Revolution Capital, along with some notable individual investors.
Why EPNS?
EPNS has the potential to be the default notification middleware for Web 3.0. As EPNS grows and becomes blockchain agnostic we will continue to see DeFi projects, decentralized exchanges, DAOs, and other protocols use EPNS to push notifications to their users and contributors. EPNS has already been adopted by UniSwap, AAVE, KuCoin, Gate.io, MakerDAO, Polygon, Gitcoin, TracerDAO, Pool Together, ENS, Gnosis, and other keystones of the crypto community. This has all happened during the testnet phase of EPNS. Currently $PUSH has a market cap of $23 million. If EPNS successfully launched their mainnet I predict even more protocols adopting the protocol and $PUSH rising in price significantly. EPNS is geared to be a top 50 project. The amount of support this project has from smart money is unlike anything we’ve previously invested in, and we believe this backing will accelerate the rise of this project into the top 50 of crypto projects.
Written by David Coryat, Crypto native and Analyst at Istari Capital LP.
This Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such
information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained in this report constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Istari or any third party service provider to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in this or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction. Please be advised that Istari Capital LP is invested in the project discussed in this article or in projects related to this article.
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