February 6, 2025 — XMTP (Extensible Message Transport Protocol) has officially announced the launch of its testnet, with early providers that include industry leaders like Coinbase Wallet, Circle, ENS, a16z Crypto, Alchemy, Faction, Mask, & Ephemera. This marks a significant milestone in the evolution of decentralized, secure, and open communication.

Recent global events have underscored the critical need for secure, decentralized messaging solutions. The arrest of technology executives, concerns about privacy of messaging during protests, banning of popular social media applications, and government surveillance of private messages all highlight the vulnerabilities in centralized communication platforms. These incidents have fueled growing concerns over privacy, surveillance, and censorship.

The XMTP testnet represents the foundation of a global decentralized messaging network to ensure that any user can access secure, private, and censorship-resistant messaging anywhere in the world.

Projects like XMTP deliver next-generation sovereignty, privacy, and censorship resistance—essentials for a healthy and functioning society. Decentralized value transfer is critical to a free society. Perhaps even more fundamental, decentralized messaging is the foundation for a free and empowered society. In an era where privacy, confidentiality, and resistance to censorship are under threat, XMTP stands as a safeguard for our privacy and a protector of our fundamental right to communicate. 

— Joe Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and the founder of Consensys

Why XMTP Matters

Consumer awareness around privacy concerns is growing rapidly, and users are demanding more control over their digital experiences. XMTP is designed to give developers a stable yet flexible platform to address a variety of secure messaging use cases. XMTP offers developers:

• Censorship-resistant network: Unlike traditional messaging platforms, XMTP’s decentralized messaging infrastructure keeps running independently of any single operator or organization. No central authority can change the rules, revoke access, or shut down the service your users depend on.

• Signal-level security, as a network: Built on the IETF-standard Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol, XMTP's fully audited implementation provides perfect forward secrecy and post-compromise security, ensuring past messages stay private and future conversations remain secure, even in the event of a key compromise.

• App interoperability: Because XMTP is built on decentralized & open standards, users can access their messages from any application that supports XMTP, preventing users from ever being locked into a single messaging application.

• Flexible identity foundation: XMTP supports a broad spectrum of identities, from naming systems (ENS, Base, Lens) to social platforms (Nostr, Bluesky, Farcaster, Lens) and even smart accounts (Safe, ERC-4337 wallets). To date, over 2 million verified identities have enabled XMTP messaging.

• Built-in spam protection: Users have complete control over who can reach them across the XMTP network. Your app automatically inherits spam protection that works across the entire XMTP network — giving every user control of who can message them.

“Decentralized messaging, such as from XMTP, gives users full control over their conversations and enables portability. This means you can move your messaging data and chats from one app to another, and you are not tied to a single app or platform. Coinbase Wallet’s integration with XMTP aims to make it easy to send secure, private, and encrypted messages to anyone, anywhere while also bringing the best of onchain into your chats.”

– Chintan Turakhia, Senior Director of Engineering for Coinbase Wallet

How the XMTP Testnet Works

Messages are delivered in milliseconds via an offchain broadcast network and consensus on critical state is maintained using Arbitrum Orbit on @base. 

XMTP uses USDC as the currency for the entire network. Ultra-low fees paid by apps in USDC are automatically distributed to node operators, creating a stable and reliable economic foundation across all participants.

🔎 You can also explore the testnet via the block explorer here:
https://xmtp-testnet.explorer.alchemy.com/

Creating a global movement in messaging

With the testnet now live, there are multiple opportunities for people across the world to help build, shape, and benefit from the future of decentralized communication.

• Build applications with XMTP: Developers can take advantage of XMTP’s highly-secure and censorship resistant network to build an application that helps users access secure, private, and verifiable messaging throughout the world.

• Become an XMTP Node Operator: Help increase the diversity of the XMTP network throughout the world, and apply to operate a node in the XMTP network. To learn about qualification criteria, see XIP-54: XMTP network node operator qualification criteria.

“Nearly every person in the world relies on messaging services every day, but messaging is too important and too personal to be controlled exclusively by centralized tech companies or individuals. Consider the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov–who singlehandedly controls Telegram’s infrastructure–in France; reports of the Chinese government hacking cellular text messages; Turkey banning Discord; or the UK threatening to ban Signal. Every one of these events highlights the vulnerabilities in centralized communication platforms and real harm to the people that rely on them. Our vision for XMTP is to create a decentralized messaging network that aligns incentives across users, developers and operators. Launching XMTP’s testnet is a major step toward a secure, private, global and censorship-resistant network that can stand the test of time.”

– Shane Mac, co-founder of XMTP and CEO & co-founder of Ephemera, Inc.

About XMTP

XMTP (Extensible Message Transport Protocol) is an open communication network that enables secure, scalable, and decentralized messaging. By fostering interoperability and privacy, XMTP is building the messaging layer for the Internet, empowering users to communicate freely and securely in a new era for decentralization.

As of January 2025, 2.2 million verified identities have enabled XMTP messaging through applications like Coinbase Wallet, Family Wallet, Lens, ENS and Unstoppable Domains applications, with thousands of developers building a wide range of applications and tools across the XMTP protocol.