College friends Joey Yu and Mason Yang were Silicon Valley success stories. They left the biggest tech company at the time, Microsoft, to build Dolphin Browser – one of the first alternative browsers for Android, which at its peak amassed over 200 million users. Then, without warning, it was delisted from the Google Play store. 

“I woke up one morning to thousands of complaint emails and comments saying Dolphin Browser had disappeared,” Yu said in a recent interview. “We didn’t know what happened. After a few weeks, Google Chrome was introduced to Android. Before that, Android only had a stock browser. They delisted all the third-party browsers with a lot of innovation. Google and Apple kill a lot of innovative start-ups. For example, iCloud was a replica of Dropbox.” 

Google’s onetime motto, ‘don’t be evil,” hit them in the face as users, bloggers, influencers, journalists and editors went to bat for Dolphin Browser. The most memorable article was by CNET, mocking Google for being evil for taking down their favorite browser. 

“Finally, Google reached out to us and said we can resubmit a new application, but the old one was gone. Users would need to uninstall the old app and reinstall the new one, so all the bookmarks and information would be lost,” Yu said. But Dolphin Browser didn’t go to the graveyard of startups at the hands of big tech. It discovered its superfans and the community helped get the app back. They were able to recoup the user base within a year. 

While the Dolphin Browser technology was innovative for the time – being the first Android browser to optimize for the mobile screen size and offer multi-touch zoom in-out – it was the community that made it special. They even had hints of a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) before DAOs were a thing, with feature requests and community voting and reward mechanisms.  

Yu continued to notice big tech swallowing up start-ups, and eventually decided to sell Dolphin Browser. “Every year, we see the top three or four popular apps disappear so Google or Android can become the default OS. The tech giants control everything. They grab your good idea and monetize with all the user data, without their knowing,” he said. 

This was right about the time Ethereum was invented. After the Google debacle, and experiencing first-hand the power of community, Yu was open to the potential of decentralization. 

Crossing paths with Vitalik Buterin in the early days 

In 2015, Yu was introduced to Ethereum Co-Founder, Vitalik Buterin, when it was presented as “a new Bitcoin.” Buterin gave Yu a couple of ideas – one was to build a decentralized web browser, similar to what Brave is today, while the other was a decentralized naming service, like ENS Domains. While Yu didn’t take Buterin up on his ideas, it further contextualized the opportunities with blockchain technologies. 

He took some time off building and invested in various projects. During this time, the web3 world had matured. “From 2015 to 2017, it was all about air coins. 2017 to 2019 was about infrastructure, the layer 2 and Zero-Knowledge. 2019 was the DeFi summer, NFTs, and GameFi. In 2020, we had a sense that it was similar to the mobile phone evolution, from Nokia to the iPhone,” he said. 

Yu had noticed pain points regarding the user-experience, or lack thereof. A tech geek, even Yu had a hard time using MetaMask. His first idea was a universal chat experience – one wallet address to talk to anyone, anywhere, from any terminal, whether it’s a web page, wallet or in a game. 

“Web3 is like a virtual society,” Yu said. “The previous blockchain is more like a banking system. You have money but there was no carrier. We wanted to connect your mouse with your pocket. If I wanted to send you one ETH, you’d send me your wallet address in Telegram, then I’d open MetaMask and send you .1 ETH and check whether you received it, before sending the rest. If you miss one letter, the money’s gone. The user experience is very fragmented.” 

SendingMe, Yu’s web3 startup, is a decentralized real-time encrypted instant-messenger platform that combines chat, socializing and trade. It facilitates the transfer of tokens and NFTs directly in chat. 

Much of the learning for SendingMe is informed by Dolphin Browser, such as the power of community, building an open ecosystem and embedding third-party apps. It also appeals as a ready-to-use communication toolkit for web3 teams that are usually small and don’t have the resources to invest in user experience, he said. 

Yu described SendingMe and SendingNetwork as the “people’s carrier.” 

"Think of it as a network carrier, similar to how Starlink operates with physical satellites, but in our case, we're creating virtual satellites,” he said. “Imagine if anyone could transform their server or laptop into a signal station by simply installing an app. This turns each device into a node, akin to a communication tower.” 

He continued, “the beauty of this system is its resilience and decentralization. With numerous nodes spread across different locations, it becomes nearly impossible for any one to shut down the entire network, censor specific messages, ban user accounts or exclude entire communities. In essence, each user contributes to a robust, unbreakable communication network." 

No censorship, banning accounts, or delisting communities. 

With more Silicon Valley builders shifting to decentralized environments, the creators and users who are sick of being commodified are rallying behind builders and brands leading in asserting digital rights for the new Internet. 

lead image: Joey Yu