Towns Protocol  (www.towns.com) is a protocol for decentralized real-time group messaging apps. It is the blockchain for communication. It consists of an EVM-compatible L2 chain, decentralized off-chain stream nodes, and smart contracts deployed on Base. Towns allows people to create programmable communication use cases, referred to as “Spaces,” in a permissionless manner. These Spaces are ownable, accrue value, feature on-chain subscriptions (“Memberships”), an extendable reputation system, and end-to-end message encryption.

Official Website

https://www.towns.com/

Traction (Launched October 2024)

Engagement (updated September 15th 2025)

• Total Memberships: 1,761,975
• Towns Created: 463,372
• Monthly Active Users: 230,298
• Weekly Active Users: 59,820
• WAU/MAU: 26%

Revenue (updated September 15th 2025)

• Gross Protocol Revenue: 9,340 ETH
• Treasury Income: 906 ETH

Token Ticker (Launched August 2025)

$TOWNS

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/towns/

Protocol’s Value Accrual

Space creators generate revenue by selling on-chain memberships. The Towns Protocol accrues value by collecting fees from these membership sales, as well as from trading and tips exchanged between users. Those fees are collected in ETH and used to offset, via programmatic buy and burn, the rewards the protocol emits for node operators. As of September 15th, the protocol has collected 906 ETH in fees.

Utility of TOWNS token

1. Network Security – $TOWNS tokens are staked by validators to secure Towns proof-of-stake network
2. Governance – $TOWNS holders can participate in on-chain governance decisions, including upgrades, economic parameter changes, and protocol improvements.
3. Protocol Utility – $TOWNS tokens can be delegated by members allowing Spaces to unlock additional protocol features

Network’s Operation

Towns Protocol has multiple independent external node operators, such as Figment, Unit410, Framework Ventures & a16z crypto. About 30 nodes running among 10 independent node operators delegating and receiving rewards programmatically. https://www.towns.com/status

Available Chains

Token Contract Address ETH https://etherscan.io/address/0x000000fa00b200406de700041cfc6b19bbfb4d13

Token Contract Address BASE https://basescan.org/address/0x00000000a22c618fd6b4d7e9a335c4b96b189a38

Token Contract Address BSC https://bscscan.com/address/0x00000000bcA93b25a6694ca3d2109d545988b13B

Decimals of Token Contract: 18 ****

Documentation and White Papers

https://docs.towns.com/

https://docs.towns.com/white-paper/towns-technical-overview

https://docs.towns.com/white-paper/technical-whitepaper

https://www.towns.com/mica-whitepaper.pdf

Key Features (https://docs.towns.com/introduction#key-features)

1.  Native Web3 Messaging with Embedded Economic Incentives

• Traditional messaging platforms don’t provide direct monetization mechanisms for users or communities.
• Existing Web3 communications solutions lack integrated financial incentives aligned directly with user and community growth.

2. Sustainable and Innovative Business Model for Communities

• Communities struggle to monetize effectively without relying on intrusive ads, centralized intermediaries, or platform fees.
• Owners and creators currently can't directly benefit economically from growing and managing their communities.

3. Fully Programmable Communication Integrated with Onchain Finance

• Communication platforms today offer limited customization, especially regarding access permissions or user criteria tied directly to blockchain-based assets.
• Communities lack flexible tools that tie group interactions, membership criteria, and payments seamlessly into onchain conditions.

4. True User Ownership and Control of Communication

• Existing platforms centralize control over group membership and messaging permissions, leaving users dependent on platform decisions and policies.
• Users currently cannot fully own or port their identities, memberships, and permissions across platforms.

5. Decentralized Privacy, Security, and Resistance to Censorship

• Users face constant risks of arbitrary bans, account deletions, or censorship from centralized service providers.
• Centralized platforms represent a single point of failure, both technically and in terms of privacy and security.

Team

Ben Rubin: 37, is a serial entrepreneur known for shaping how people connect online. He has founded numerous influential companies at the forefront of social networking and digital communication. Among them: Meerkat, a pioneer in mobile live broadcasting; Houseparty, the group video chat app that reached over 150 million users and was acquired by Epic Games in 2019.

Today, Ben is the founder and CEO of Towns Labs, the team behind Towns Protocol—a next-generation communication infrastructure backed by a16z, Benchmark, and Coinbase Ventures. Since its launch in October 2024, communities built on Towns have generated over $25 million in revenue.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubinben/

Pat Fives: Pat is a co-founder and Chief Protocol Officer of Towns Labs. A true crypto-native, Pat has been developing software and investing in the crypto space since 2012. He brings over a decade of deep insight to building high performant user facing applications. Before Towns, Pat was an engineer at several Bay Area startups, including Houseparty, where he scaled the product to reach hundreds of millions of users.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickfives/

**Serge Khorun:** Serge is the Protocol Lead at Towns Labs, where he leads the development of the Towns Protocol. A veteran engineer with over 15 years of experience building internet-scale infrastructure, Serge previously spent nearly a decade at Google as a Staff Software Engineer working on large-scale distributed systems. Before joining Towns, he co-founded a startup focused on peer-to-peer communication protocols, and earlier in his career, he engineered the storage layer at Amazon S3. Serge brings a rare combination of protocol-level thinking and real-world execution to the mission of building sovereign, programmable communication spaces.