Introduction

• The Application Level Message Protocol focuses on broadcast, point to point and AI Use Cases at DApp level. Providing an Open Source communication toolkit with allows feeds to be broadcast, conversations to be initiated (2-way) and to be able to communicate a query to AI based services augments the User Experience for DApps and wallet-holders.
• Building a set of tools in collaboration with DApps and wallets from the outset, taking feedback on best practices, providing early adopter opportunities from Phase 1 ensures the view of the Community is taken and adoption is the priority.
• Establishing the metrics, KPIs both of broadcast, point to point, and data-queries ensures the expection of the DApps, Wallets, wallet-holders are observed and feedback applied
• Establishing the parameters in terms of target payload will ensure expectations are managed and Features are ranked by utility
• It would be envisaged that utilising Protocols already existing, or applying new flavours to those protocols will be agreed with the Cardano Community
• Consideration to message expiry, rate-limiting, and spam control could mean a broader utility for social, financial and service oriented state messaging.

Headline

• Cardano enters into a new era of growth needing a message protocol scalable for social, defi and technical Use Cases.
• Cardano's Network layer Ouroboros services the business of block dispersion, transaction routing, peer to peer connectivity and is optimised for transport.
• This proposal centres on solving an bi-directional communication gap between DApps to their Users, Users to Users and DApps to broader applications
• By enabling a communication capability, communication can occur as:
• • a broadcast feed which can facilitate updates on Governance Actions, Marketing events, App-specific alerts and notifications
• • a point to point communication where an app user can communicate with other users in the ecosystem or other users, or indeed the DApp itself has a point to point conversation
• • AI based query can be submitted and information retrieved, providing value across the communication channel
• Focusing on wallets (embedded or solely), and establishing these communication mechanism does not need to burden the blockchain but can be managed using an initial centralised Service
• Future iterations could leverage SPOs
• A richer set of communication tools will provide a richer User Experience with more enabled alerts, feedback and retain users in the ecosystem
• Working with an initial set of wallets and nodes to deploy and confirm the utility within phase 1 of the project. Phase 2 will focus on broadening the node-base and leveraging the Cardano infrastructure extending to the SPO network
• A well developed toolkit dedicated to embed of communication, open sourced to the communicty, can scale and meet the growing needs of Cardano DApp ecosystem.
• Uses Cases in Social, Governance, Marketing and more general network wellness and belonging; need a Messaging Protocol with everyday utility

Wallet-Centric

• With this Protocol, Wallets (or wallet-addresses) take a central and integral role in bringing communication to early adopters who wish to participate in designing utility and developer experience
• Making a more fluid experience where transaction signing is not required for each step also augments the experience.

What does it include

• Marketing Campaign broadcast, Governance updates, Events update, Alert & Notifications using a RSS variant
• P2P like library to allow chat (1-1, and fixed size group chat), embedded chat using wallet-addresses, peer to peer or in-DApp
• AI query toolkit to allow submit of graphql type queries against chain indexers and Oracles
• • engagement with data providers to collaborate on AI based services is anticipated

How can this be done

• Establish focus group to refine proposed Use Cases: -- marketing / governance / alert-signals / collection of user feedback
• Determine approach for an initial 'centralised' approach to gain support in Phase 1, present and rally support with Social Media (already proposed working with Anastasia Labs)
• Leverage available technologies and focus on solving business need, with focus on Governance, Marketing and DApps in Phase 2

Technical Alignment

• The early stages of this project are likely using RSS-variant for broadcast, p2p variant for point to point, and AI approaches for advanced data extraction techniques for onchain stored data. These are not immediately requiring new protocols
• Any network gaps will be discussed with partners in Cardano L2 and emerging L2 teams for collaboration and reusability Opportunity
• Initial implementations will focus on 'smaller' payloads with focus on reliability and performance
• Alignment with established protocols will ensure focus on the key areas of adoption, user Experience and developer-experience is prioritised ; initially a REST API approach will likely be utilised with possible augmentation in line with CIP-95

Leveraging and Creating Utility in the DApp Community

• Publishing a proof of concept in phase 1 and roadshow with DApp community will be primary
• Publishing of measurements and KPIs for the core User Cases will be used to ensure milestones are met based on reliability and performance, ease of integration and adoption statistics

Security and Quality of Service

• Focus on security will involve engagement with Cardano Network working group
• No wallet address is exposed unless explicitly opted-in.

Monetisation Opportunity

• Fee-based relaying or storage, earning rewards for uptime and quality of service (QoS).
• SPOs could optionally sign a PoS-based SLA with clients for QoS or storage guarantees, governed by on-chain reputation and stake-weighted scoring

Who will we be engaging with

• DApps, Wallet builders, Cardano Networking Working Group
• Full-Node wallets e.g. Daedalus or Lace could fully participate in publishing/reading messages directly.
• Cardano Foundation 'cardano-wallet'
• Intersect Governance govtool

Supporting our Proposal

• Surveys by Gartner have evidence retention rates being highest on applications where chat features 1-1 and group are embedded. These applications create community and retain 20% more than DeFi.
• Cardano currently offers email like communication which could be greatly enhanced by * Application Level Message Protocol [ALMP]* would the facility to unlock a new type of app (often referred to as SuperApp)
• With a robust mechanism for applications in the Cardano Ecosystem to embed social features, bidirectional communication, topic broadcast this solution enables a new level of interactive conversation on Cardano
• Using the existing Wallet and permissionless model, also bring new utility (beyond DeFi and early stage Governance), users connecting via Wallet also brings value to the wallet community by providing access to community messaging, increase reconnect between projects and wallets holders.
• Having possibilty to converge social, governance, lifestyle and finance thru a new Applicaiton Level Message Protocol [ALMP] is a great uplift to Cardano
• we are optimising for messaging on social apps, application transactions status, governance broadcast type messages whilst enforcing anti-spam mechanisms reduces friction with moving parts of Cardano Blockchain

Acceleration of Growth

• This protocol seeks to accelerate the build of inter-application messaging including
• • DApps can have a 1-1
• • DApps can consider non-SPAM based Group chats
• • Social messaging trust reinforced wallet based security
• Introduce utility and revenue earning mesh and potential utility yield for subscription based apps based on ability to join high value subscription services
• Augment recent Governance by providing channels for Community Announcements
• Messaging with security bake-in for Micro-Purchases including Gaming /NFT minting
• Targeted positive developer experience in a messaging protocol with a smooth integration route for React, TypeScript and mobile builders

Availability and Target

• Priority integration into Cardano Governance process to enable ‘governance updates for the masses’ including ability for DReps to broadcast curated messages within agree message-etiquette around voting, preferences and leanings
• Ecosystem message broadcast without violating the anti-spam measurements, incorporating slashing approach where SPAM detected
• On-ramp for initial set of DApps and Wallets in Q3 2025 with SDK tutorials to allow expedited adoption
• Focus on initial centralised nodes to support the backend-messaging and security
• Broader adoption with target audience similar to CIP-95 by end of Q4 2025 Q1-2026
• Ability to integrate with Chat SDK to facilitate smooth onboarding using wallet based connection
• Integration of the messaging feature upgrades into Daedalus with provision of chat-sdks to other software wallets

New Sources of Value

• Use SPOs as reliable decentralized relays and store/forward nodes.
• Prevent spam through lightweight proof, rate limiting, and token bonding.
• Provide privacy through encrypted, ephemeral identities and routing obfuscation.
• Be modular enough to expand into notification services, governance signals, or collaborative DApps.

Genesis + DHT-based protocol would

• Allow full-node/software/hardware wallets (via proxy) to communicate securely and anonymously and to receive updated on app-state, governance-actions, community-updates

design proposal and sequence diagram with PoC as milestone 1 1st implementation to run on local node setup with 10 clients as milestone 2 Iterative implementation to run with various incremental slides from 3.2/5/7/10milestone 4 Iterative implementation to run on wide setup with 100 concurrent clients as milestone 4

Design and Architecture including node adoption route captures 2 Parttime - 40,000 USD PoC, research and scale model 2 Parttime- 60,000 USD Implementation of protocol, wallet integration support - 3 FTE , 120k USD - 360,000 Testing and scenario augmentation - 2 part-time - 80,000 USD User Experience / AMA/ Design review / workshops - 60,000 USD Software Audit and Remediation - 60,000 USD

4-5 people with 3 key contributors, some cryptographic and specialised network folks throughout DApp developers for maintenance centre and dashboard on performance

experience in Genesis, Cardano Node, network engineering and optimisations in TradFi and HFT team consist of former head of delivery for Cardano (having delivered Chang and Plomin HF) other members have experience in building resilient network layers of chat on gossip, p2plib, whisper experience in leading the rollout of key technology to SPOs, DApps and Community for CIP-69, CIP-30, CIP-1694 experience working with our colleagues at CF, Emurgo, IOE and IOHK drafting and reviewing of Statements fo Work to ensure smooth integration of Ouroboros Genesis, Voltaire-era

open source projects and collaborators to get involved training and key recipes will be produced to ensure positive user experience

This has been fielded with DReps and given its ability to provide a messaging protocol for the DApp community and supporting Governance this was well received.

Acceptance by Stake Pool Operator on local DHT and Application Level Message Protocol service installation Acceptance by Full Node Wallets on local DHT and Application Level Message Protocol service installation Acceptance by Software Wallets providers to implement Application Level Message Protocol service installation