Odin Blockchain, a community-driven distributed ledger blockchain ecosystem, announced Thursday the launch of its private messenger service Odin Chat, which has been in early access since May.

This chat application has been launched in advance of other Odin services, which will include gaming and asset trading capabilities, and will allow users to exchange private messages and hide from prying eyes while gaining the benefits of a blockchain service.

“From launch, users get free, private chat-messaging, instant transactions, and military-grade security as a baseline default,” said Odin founder Peter McClory.

Blockchain technology operates by massively distributing transactions across multiple nodes protected by cryptography. This means anything recorded to a blockchain becomes increasingly difficult to tamper with and the use of encryption enables privacy. Although the transactions are publicly verifiable, the data and participants can be encrypted so that only parties with the keys can access the information.

Mobile messaging has become a major mainstay of internet use over the past decade and the global user base has exploded to over 6 billion people. Corporations and businesses, however, have proven problematic when it comes to user privacy — since personal information is often stored by messaging apps and thus leaves it open to be accessed by unauthorized third-parties.

Odin Chat seeks to provide a fix for this by putting the keys to that personal information into the hands of users. With strong encryption, access controls and a distributed framework, a blockchain means that there is no centralized party that has access to everything: those with a stake in their own data maintain the access to that data at all times.

“Odin Chat is not just an application that offers a secure means of communication through end-to-end encryption, but a central flagship component of the Odin ecosystem,” said Vaughn Bullock, lead developer at Odin.

Future features for the Odin ecosystem will allow the protocol to host other applications and gaming extensions. This would enable third-party developers and entrepreneurs can use Odin’s application programming interface to connect their own applications, expand the ecosystem as well as run token transactions on the network.

“Many Odin Chat features and applications are in various stages of development. Our future Odin API will be a core piece of technology that enables others to build on the Odin Platform, and provide value for users,” said McClory. “We are also keen to talk with other crypto communities to help them onboard their assets into Odin Chat in order to provide their coins with additional utilities.”

The Odin ecosystem runs on a token known as the $ODIN coin. This currency allows for exchanges such as microtransactions, which would be useful for gaming, reward systems and other applications that produce value for users. The currency is also fundamental to the operation of many blockchains and helps to secure the underlying transactions, thus using these tokens will help build the Odin network itself.

The Odin blockchain chat app is available on Google Play for Android devices and is up-to-date with all recent changes, enabling users private messaging and access to an Odin wallet for the tokens.

Image: Odin