The Next Hokage of Real-time Communication

avatar-3@newsletter.paragraph.com (Avatar ) — Sat, 15 Oct 2022 17:20:46 GMT

From texting friends on Discord to planning that never-happening Goa vacation on a video call, we cannot imagine our life without real-time communication. It has become an inseparable part of how we as humans communicate with each other.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the remote-work culture have only accelerated the use of real-time communication applications like Zoom. Nonetheless, the notorious data-collecting practices of centralized communication platforms raise concerns about user privacy. In 2021, a lawsuit claimed Zoom was sharing users' data with Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn. Zoom isn't the only one with privacy loopholes. Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and WebX may be collecting more data than you realize.

Don't worry anon, Huddle01 has your back! Huddle01 is a privacy-focused real-time communication application that enables you to host and attend private meetings. NFT avatars, decentralized storage, ENS names, seamless user experience, it has them all.

I tried the Huddle01 web app and love the buffer-free video calling experience. For this article, I interviewed Ayush Ranjan, co-founder, and CEO at Huddle01. Ayush is an electrical engineer turned growth marketer who happens to be a big Naruto fan. He has collected .eth names of several characters from the Naruto franchise. A big thank you to Ayush for giving his time and patiently answering all my questions.

In this article, I will dive deep into Huddle01. From what is Huddle01, how it works, and how much it costs to host calls on Huddle01, to the future roadmap, I have covered everything.

What is Huddle01?

Image source - https://huddle01.com/

Huddle01 app is a privacy-focused decentralized video-calling application. Think of Zoom and Google Meet minus the tracking and centralized architecture. The end goal of Huddle01 is to create a decentralized real-time communication engine upon which developers will be able to build next-generation real-time communication apps.

You don't need to sign up with your email or phone number to start hosting video calls or enter meetings on Huddle01. Simply connect your Ethereum wallet (Coinbase, MetaMask, or Wallet Connect) or use Huddle01 as a guest user. However, please note that you cannot access the Huddle01 dashboard and use your NFTs as your avatar if you enter as a guest.

If you are wondering what's the backstory behind Huddle01 name, here's what you need to know -

https://twitter.com/being_Wayne/status/1571788503658434561?s=20&t=dxYaYdVhiujHYJlOvww1Hg

Huddle01 Ecosystem

Whether you prefer talking to your friends using your smartphone or you are more of a desktop caller, Huddle01 have you covered. Huddle01 has a dedicated Android and iOS client, a web app, and a Chrome extension. You can use Huddle01 the way you prefer.

Huddle01 also offers SDKs for developers wanting to build real-time communication applications by leveraging the Huddle01 infrastructure. Read this Twitter thread to learn how Anjana built a chess app Buddle01 using Huddle01 SDK. If you wish to integrate real-time audio and video communication features in your app or website using Huddle01 SDKs here's detailed documentation for you.

Here's a fun fact. Huddle01 intern cares for all the Web3 singles out there. Huddle01 intern plans to build Cuddle01, a Web3 dating app, using Huddle01 iframes.

Why should I use Huddle01?

I asked this question to Ayush while having an off-camera talk with him. Here's what he said -

“We cannot ask users to migrate to Web3 apps by telling them to compromise on user experience in the name of privacy and decentralization. We must give them a solid reason to use Web3 apps. This can only be done by providing a superior user experience and competitive features while standing true to the Web3 ethos of privacy and decentralization along the way. Huddle01 has better privacy features and user experience than the existing Web2 real-time communication apps and that's why you might want to use Huddle01”

Image source - https://twitter.com/huddle01com

I have been using Huddle01 for a few days now and I can vouch for what Ayush said. Huddle01 is easy to use, facilitates buffer-free calls, provides multiple streaming options, Web3 native features like token-gated meetings, and 100Gb free decentralized storage. Most importantly, the screen share quality on Huddle01 is superior to Zoom. Messari, the leader in crypto research, shifted from Zoom to Huddle01 thanks to Huddle01's superior screen-sharing quality and Web3 features.

If you've used Huddle01 and wondering what's the secret behind Huddle01's smooth user interface, Huddle01 has appointed design partners who review the design files before it is finalized for development. It is this battle-tested approach that helps Huddle01 build the best user experience.

Let's glance through Huddle01 features –

Token-gated meetings - Host meetings exclusively for NFT communities.
NFT as an avatar - Flaunt your favorite NFTs as your avatar on Huddle01.
Web3 login - Use your Ethereum wallet or Unstoppable Domain to host and attend meetings on Huddle01.
Live recording and storage - Record your meetings and get 100Gb free storage on IPFS, a decentralized storage-as-a-service platform.
Live streaming - Live stream your videos on YouTube, Twitch, or Livepeer.
Schedule meetings - Visit Cal.com and schedule your meetings on Huddle01.

Apart from these features, Huddle01 has some cool features like keyboard shortcuts (for instance, press Shift+H to raise/lower hand), a live meeting timer to show the duration of the meet, bandwidth saver mode, file sharing, the ability to pin any user to see them in full screen, etc. Moreover, Huddle01 recently announced its 'webinar mode' enabling hosts to create view-only meetings where attendees can interact with them using text messages. The Huddle01 webinar mode is being tested by the Huddle01 team and it will be launched once the testing phase is completed.

How to use Huddle01?

Huddle01 provides a seamless user experience. Every process is well-labeled and easy to navigate. The best part about Huddle01 is its dashboard. From meetings overview (scheduled meetings, upcoming meetings, etc), and meeting recordings, to profile settings, it provides a single window to access everything you need for your online meetings.

Here's how to get started with Huddle01 -

Start a meeting using Huddle01

Visit https://huddle01.com/ and click on the 'Start Meeting' tab or hit the 'Huddle Now' button to enter the Huddle01 lobby.

Give camera and microphone access to Huddle01 and test your video and audio. You can sign in with your preferred Ethereum wallet or use Huddle01 as a guest user. For this tutorial, let's sign in using MetaMask. (I have given the camera and microphone access to Huddle01. However, for the sake of taking the screenshot, I have disabled them).

To connect your MetaMask, click on the MetaMask icon and sign the transaction using your wallet. Once you are connected with your wallet, set up your display name and click on 'Start Meeting'.

That's it. You have successfully created a Huddle01 meeting. Share the invite link to invite people to your meeting room.

Schedule a token-gated meeting with Huddle01

You can host token-gated meetings on Huddle01 where only people holding an NFT from the specified NFT collection can join the meet. Here's how to schedule a token-gated meeting on Huddle01.

Go to https://huddle01.com/ and click on the 'Schedule' tab and sign in with your preferred Ethereum wallet. This will take you to the Huddle01 dashboard.

Once you are on your Huddle01 dashboard, select 'Meetings' from the left panel.

Now, click on 'Create Meeting' and fill in the meeting details along with the NFT address.

After entering the meeting details, cross-check the fields, and click 'Submit' to schedule the meeting. You have now successfully created a token-gated meeting on Huddle01.

Here are more tutorials to help you get started with Huddle01 -

Is Huddle01 free to use?

Yes. Currently, you don't need to pay to use Huddle01. Unlike Zoom, there is no 40-minute limit. You can continue your Huddle01 meeting for as long as you want. Huddle01 will be a freemium platform wherein users can access the platform for free as long as they don't wish to use premium features.

As of now, Huddle01 only charges users utilizing the Huddle1 infrastructure to power their native white-labeled real-time communication apps as well as people requesting custom sub-domains for meetings. Yes, Huddle01 is revenue positive. It plans to hit $100,000 ARR by mid-2023.

In the future, Huddle01 will introduce subscription plans that will give users access to premium features like AR NFT filters, voice modulation for anonymity, support for up to 500 users per meeting, custom sub-domain, white-labeled meeting rooms (logos, background, etc), in-built proof-of-attendance, and much more. For companies and developers who wish to build real-time communication apps using Huddle01 SDKs, Huddle01 will launch pay-per-use payment plans.

The pricing plans are not yet decided. However, Ayush confirmed that annual subscription plans are expected to start from $300 per license whereas pay-per-use pricing will be around $2 per 1000 minutes. (The pricing is not finalized yet and it is subject to change)

How does Huddle01 work under the hood?

Understanding WebRTC and P2P communication

WebRTC or Web real-time communication is an open-source project that allows web browsers and mobile apps to facilitate peer-to-peer communication. Put simply, WebRTC allows anyone with an internet connection to communicate with others in real time. Tech giants like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Opera support WebRTC.

Image source - https://blog.huddle01.com/what-is-webrtc-and-how-are-we-scaling-it-8580d29f74d4

Each device communicating via WebRTC is connected with each other using bidirectional connections. Since each device is connected to the other, there is no need for a central media server to route media. Each device sends media to all other participants as well as receives media from every other participant.

The scalability issues of WebRTC and its solution

WebRTC is cheap, secure, open-source, and private. However, it is not scalable.

As there are no media servers to deliver audio and video in a P2P architecture, the devices connected to the network have to do all the heavy lifting. In short, the problem with every participant connecting with every other participant in the call is that as the number of clients increases, it becomes difficult for individual clients to maintain connections. As a result, more than 10 people cannot connect to a WebRTC-powered call.

The two most popular methods to scale the WebRTC infrastructure are the Selective Forwarding Unit (SFU) and Multipoint Conferencing Unit (MCU). Both SFU and MCU use media servers to route the audio and video streams thereby offloading the stream processing done by the participating clients.

With SFU and MCU, each participant sends their encrypted media stream to a centralized media server rather than sending the media streams to each participant. The media server then transmits the streams to other participants in the network. SFU media servers forward the received streams without further processing. On the other hand, MCU media servers combine all the incoming streams into one single stream before encoding it and transmitting it to all the clients.

Huddle01 uses SFU as it is easier to implement and requires less processing power which will encourage users to become nodes in the Huddle01 network once Huddle01 starts decentralizing its operations.

Scaling WebRTC with a custom SFU

Image source - https://blog.huddle01.com/what-is-webrtc-and-how-are-we-scaling-it-8580d29f74d4

Selective Forwarding Unit or SFU routes audio and video packets via a centralized server. Say, if I am hosting a video call from Australia and the media server is located somewhere in Canada, the video and audio streams will be routed from Canada. The geographic distance between the media server and the client can result in latency.

To combat this Huddle01 uses its native version of SFU algorithm. With their custom SFU, Huddle01 uses several media servers and routes media from the media server nearest to the client to facilitate buffer-free calls.

The end goal - Building a dRTC engine

We are upgrading WebRTC to dRTC - Ayush Ranjan

The long-term vision of Huddle01 is to build a decentralized real-time communication engine that will power the next generation of real-time communication applications. Think of dRTC as the Linux of real-time communication platforms. With the launch of Huddle01 SDKs, Huddle01 is already a step closer to its aim of building a dRTC protocol.

Is Huddle01 secure?

Huddle01 uses WebRTC and thus inherits the security features of the WebRTC project. WebRTC uses Datagram Transport Layer (DTLS) and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) to encrypt communications and prevent cybercriminals from hijacking the call.

Huddle01 is also experimenting with insertable streams to mask communications on their platform as well as zero-knowledge proofs to securely transition to a node-to-node architecture.

Ethereum.org says that a zero-knowledge proof is a way of proving the validity of a statement without revealing the statement itself. Wait, how this will help Huddle01 to build a secure node-to-node architecture? Currently, Huddle01 uses a centralized media server to route communications. However, to decentralize its architecture, Huddle01 will allow anyone with a good laptop and an internet connection to run media server nodes on their platform. Say you are a node (server) on Huddle01 responsible for routing media streams on the platform. You will need to prove that you successfully routed the incoming media stream.

A zero-knowledge proof will help you verify your work without revealing to you what are the contents of the media stream you transmitted. This serves both purposes - you provided evidence that you did the assigned task while the client's privacy is maintained. Watch this video to understand what is zero-knowledge proof.

Huddle01 roadmap

Ayush explained that Huddle01 plans to achieve its vision of building a decentralized real-time communication engine in three phases. In phase 1, Huddle01 launched their video calling apps on Android and iOS, web app, chrome extension, and SDKs. In phase 2, Huddle01 will start decentralizing its operations by using a decentralized signaling server and shifting from client-server architecture to a node-to-node architecture allowing users to become a media server node in the Huddle01 ecosystem. In the final phase, Huddle01 will launch their Huddle01 crypto token and introduce incentives for running Huddle01 nodes.

Talking about upcoming features and launches, Huddle01 will support the Solana blockchain by mid-November 2022 or sooner. Huddle01 will also integrate with Reef chain and Secret Network. Calendly integration is also in the pipeline but it might take a few months due to the closed-source nature of the platform. Huddle01 weekly update #Week43 suggests that Huddle01 will be launching several APIs, tools, and features in early 2023.

Tell me more about Huddle01

History

The idea of building a decentralized communication platform came to Ayush while he was discussing Ethereum in a Zoom meeting. He realized discussing a decentralized technology on a centralized platform was contradicting. Ayush and Susmit, the two co-founders of Huddle01 came together with the idea in EthGlobal HackFS 2020 hackathon.

Fast forward to 2021, the Huddle01 team started using Huddle01 for their in-team meetings on January 10, 2021. After testing the platform for over a year, Huddle01 beta was released to the public on May 12, 2022. As of October 2022, Huddle01 has over 12,000 users and over 25,000 meetings have been hosted on the platform according to Ayush.

Huddle01 Team

Image source - https://twitter.com/ranjan3118

Huddle01 is a 22-member team with talented professionals from all fields be it marketing, development, design, or product management. The fact that the Huddle01 team built webinar mode from scratch in less than 40 hours says volumes about their potential and dedication to building the next-generation communication platform.

https://twitter.com/NathanMontone/status/1580290758523105280?s=20&t=di0fEdaGOTPgxHTLZLKitQ

Ayush Ranjan and Susmit Lavania co-founded Huddle01. Ayush, CEO of Huddle01, is an electrical engineer turned growth marketer. Susmit, CTO of Huddle01, is a blockchain architect, having previously worked at companies like CoinDCX and Uber.

Other team members include Akshit Gupta (Full stack MERN developer), Deepanshu Singh (Full stack developer), Shashank Shekar Singh (VP of Product), Akshita Ahluwalia (Marketing and Community), and Aditya Kumar (Design lead), among others.

Huddle01 funding and partnerships

Image source - https://twitter.com/huddle01com

Huddle01 has raised a total of $1.8 million in their Grant funding round announced on February 2, 2021. Fenbushi Captial, HashKey Capital, Sandeep Nailwal, Preethi Kasireddy, and many more notable investors have invested in Huddle01.

Image source - https://huddle01.com/

Talking about partnerships, Huddle01 has joined hands with Unstoppable domains, Filecoin, Livepeer, Cal.com, Reef, Messari, Meet with wallet, MetaPass, etc.

You can check the partnership announcements here -

https://twitter.com/huddle01com/status/1572246639343185921?s=20&t=MjtVeglc0CCd1zuh8N70Hw

https://twitter.com/huddle01com/status/1560606311942828032?s=20&t=MjtVeglc0CCd1zuh8N70Hw

https://twitter.com/ranjan3118/status/1549458204262023168?s=20&t=MjtVeglc0CCd1zuh8N70Hw

https://twitter.com/huddle01com/status/1556530045875007488?s=20&t=MjtVeglc0CCd1zuh8N70Hw

https://twitter.com/huddle01com/status/1554495335598555136?s=20&t=MjtVeglc0CCd1zuh8N70Hw

https://twitter.com/huddle01com/status/1547242179923709952?s=20&t=MjtVeglc0CCd1zuh8N70Hw

https://twitter.com/huddle01com/status/1543629357285273600?s=20&t=MjtVeglc0CCd1zuh8N70Hw

https://twitter.com/ranjan3118/status/1519284758655934464?s=20&t=MjtVeglc0CCd1zuh8N70Hw

https://twitter.com/huddle01com/status/1515025151355949056?s=20&t=MjtVeglc0CCd1zuh8N70Hw

https://blog.huddle01.com/huddle01-cal-com-8b6bc12ceaf

No fees. No registration. No tracking.

Huddle01 stands true to its tagline – No fees. No registration. No tracking. The unfortunate notion in the Web2 world is that if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. This isn't true with Huddle01. The Huddle01 project preserves the Web3 ethos of privacy and decentralization while providing a superior real-time communication experience than its Web2 counterparts like Zoom. You don't need an email, phone number, or even a Web3 wallet to use Huddle01. Huddle01 does not track your location or IP.

Try Huddle01 now to get the Web3 experience of real-time communication yourself!

FAQs

Is Huddle01 a registered company?

Yes. Huddle01 is registered in the United States.

How much gas fee do I need to pay for using Huddle01?

You don't need to pay any gas fees for using Huddle01.

Do I need a Web3 wallet to use Huddle01?

No. You can use Huddle01 without a Web3 wallet with limited features. To access all the features (dashboard, NFT avatar, etc) you need to connect your Web3 wallet with Huddle01.

I recorded a call on Huddle01, where can I find the recording?

Go to https://dashboard.huddle01.com/ and connect your Ethereum wallet. Once you are on your Huddle01 dashboard, click on 'Storage' from the left-hand side panel to see your recorded meetings.

Where can I find host controls on Huddle01?

While you are hosting a meeting on Huddle01, click on the three dots in the upper right corner of your screen and select 'Settings'. Now, choose 'Host controls' from the left panel to access host controls.

How many people can attend a Huddle01 meeting?

Currently, 100-200 attendees can join a Huddle01 meet.

How many people use Huddle01?

As of October 2022, Huddle01 has over 12,000 users and over 25,000 meetings have been hosted on the platform.

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