dm.fun vs Cherry: wallet model, gating, and paid groups

dm.fun vs Cherry is a choice between two Solana chat apps for token communities, and the wallet model settles most of it. dm.fun, from Matrica Labs, creates a chat room for every Solana token contract address and gives each user an embedded wallet made by Privy; it went “officially live” on May 21 2026. Cherry (cherry.fun) is a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto, built by Cherry Technologies, S.A.: you sign in with the wallet you already use, DM any wallet address, and join or create token-gated, NFT-gated, and paid group chats with no phone number, email, or KYC. dm.fun is designed for a room that already exists for every CA, with raids and a buy bot built in. Cherry fits better if you want gating checked on-chain against your own rules, paid membership in SOL or USDC with an indexable storefront, and a way to reach members from other apps.

What dm.fun is

dm.fun is a Solana-only crypto social app from Matrica Labs, the company behind Discord and Telegram gating and voting tools for Solana NFT communities. Its core mechanic is a chat room for every Solana token, created as soon as its contract address is on-chain, with a chart, a buy bot, and swaps inside it. Its home page sums it up as “Chat, meme, and trade. All in one.” The product arrived in steps: a $FUN presale on Metaplex Genesis in October 2025; an invite-only beta from November 2025; a Solana dApp Store listing in December 2025; DMs and private groups on March 4 2026; and “officially live” on web, Seeker, iOS, and Android on May 21 2026 with alpha groups, USDC paid groups, Polymarket markets, and Pokemon packs. dm.fun reported 1,000+ beta users on January 19 2026, 2,000+ new users over its launch weekend on May 26 2026, and 150K total messages on June 15 2026. In June 2026 its Google Play listing showed 1K+ installs and 3.2 stars from 5 reviews, and its App Store listing 5.0 from 5 ratings.

What Cherry is

Cherry is a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app with a web app at chat.cherry.fun, iOS and Android apps, and a listing on the Solana dApp Store for the Seeker phone. Your wallet is your account: sign-in is a signed message (Sign In With Solana), nothing goes on-chain, no gas. Cherry started on Solana and also supports Base, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, and Robinhood Chain, so a group can gate on ERC-20 or NFT holders on Base and you can DM any Ethereum address. Every public group has a storefront page at chat.cherry.fun/@<handle>, and developers get mini apps, an embeddable chat widget, and an API with bots, free and self-serve at portal.cherry.fun. Cherry hosts 200+ communities and has sent 1M+ messages as of September 2026. On 11 September 2026, the Cherry Announcements channel that every signed-in wallet joins had 77,440 wallets, and Seeker Club, the largest Seeker owners community gated by a .skr domain, had 8,637 members, 58,193 messages, and 4.9 stars from 41 reviews. As of September 2026, Cherry is #1 on the Seeker dApp Store with 4.8 stars from 4,000+ reviews. More on the company is on the about page .

dm.fun vs Cherry at a glance

“Not stated” means dm.fun has made no public statement on that row as of September 2026.

Identity and onboarding

The wallet model is the difference a community owner feels first. Each dm.fun member gets an embedded wallet that Privy creates at sign-up; its Google Play listing calls it “self-custodial wallet security via Privy.io” (June 2026). dm.fun has not said that members can connect an external wallet such as Phantom, so a member’s dm.fun identity is the wallet dm.fun made for them.

On Cherry the wallet your holders already keep their bags in is the account, and their .sol, .skr, or AllDomains name is the display name. The holder you want to verify is already verifiable, because the tokens sit in the wallet that signed in. A holder who has never opened Cherry can still be DMed by address, and the conversation waits for them (see DM a wallet address ).

Gating and paid access

dm.fun’s gating is a SOL-balance requirement to join a chat (announced March 4 2026), plus holder chats, whale roles, and dev claims tied to the token’s CA. Paid alpha groups arrived at the May 21 2026 launch: an owner charges in USDC and, in dm.fun’s words, gets “paid in USDC directly to your wallet” (May 22 2026). dm.fun has not published its own cut or a price range.

Cherry checks gating rules on-chain itself, without a verify bot, a verification site, or re-verify DMs. The seven rule types are token balance (SPL and Token-2022, plus ERC-20 and BEP-20), NFT collection ownership, Metaplex Core collection, domain ownership (.sol, .skr, any AllDomains TLD), a wallet balance or trading-volume threshold, the wallet app a member signed in with, and payment. Members of gated public groups are re-verified in the background: sell below the threshold and access ends; an owner’s invite is exempt from the holdings check but never from payment. Details are on the token-gated chat and NFT-gated chat pages.

Paid access has two shapes, described on the paid communities and channels page: a one-time entry fee of 0.0001 to 100 SOL, or a recurring USDC membership billed through the Solana Subscriptions and Allowances program, where the member authorizes a plan once, Cherry pulls each period, and a failed pull paywalls them until they renew. Either way the owner keeps 70% and Cherry takes 30%, as of 10 September 2026. A paid group is always public, so its storefront shows the price, rules, member count, and reviews that only active members can leave. SNS Club is a domain-gated example with a public storefront: 1,455 members holding a .sol domain on 10 September 2026.

Chat, DMs, and encryption

dm.fun’s social layer, added March 4 2026, covers DMs, private group chats, friends and follow, a notification inbox, voice messages, and chat filters. Its moderation kit for token chats, listed December 4 2025, is kick and ban, slow mode, chat lock, and dev and mod badges; emoji-only mode is part of the dm.fun feature set as of 2026. Whether its DMs are end-to-end encrypted is not stated.

On Cherry you can DM any wallet address, including one that has never signed in, and those DMs are end-to-end encrypted with keys derived from your wallet signature. Cold DMs land in a Requests folder with no push notification, and those from very new wallets go to a hidden folder. A sender who wants a stranger to see the message pays a flat 0.01 SOL (the default as of 10 September 2026) for delivery with a notification.

Trading, prediction markets, and money features

Trading is where dm.fun has the most product. Every token chat carries a chart, a buy bot, and one-tap swaps; raids come in four tiers (X raids, market-cap boost, trending-algo boost, “ape in”), announced December 2 2025. Holding 10K FUN gave zero swap fees in the open beta (October 29 2025). Polymarket markets became viewable on February 2 2026 and tradable at the May 21 2026 launch.

On Cherry, type $TICKER or paste a contract address and the composer autocompletes it through Jupiter token search; the message renders a card with price and market cap, and Buy opens a Jupiter Swap modal on web (on iOS, Swap and Buy are outbound links per App Store rules). A trade another member shares in the chat can be copied in one tap through the same swap flow. The call bot, where an owner enables it, ranks calls by peak multiplier, credited to the earliest caller. Perps and tokenized stocks live in the Trading Terminal mini app at chat.cherry.fun/@trade (159 members, 5 stars from 3 reviews on 10 September 2026), and prediction markets in the Polymarket mini app at chat.cherry.fun/@predict (978 members on 11 September 2026).

Developer surface and distribution

This is the widest gap. dm.fun is a closed app: its integrations (Polymarket, Collector Crypt, Husher) are first-party, and it has announced no SDK, public API, or third-party mini app program as of September 10 2026. Its web presence is one home page, and group links such as dm.fun/g/rips open a “download the app” interstitial.

Cherry puts the community where your members already are. The Mini App SDK runs web apps inside Cherry chats with the user’s wallet and room context, and as of September 2026 it also runs inside Solflare, Mattle.fun, SeekerGram, and Seeker Legends. The Chat Embed SDK drops a Cherry room into any website or dApp, and a public room embeds with no backend. Developers can create rooms and run bots with their own in-room identity through the Cherry API , and every one of these developer tools is free. Every public group’s storefront is indexable.

One factor for owners who work with sponsors: the App Store rates dm.fun 18+, while Cherry counts SNS, Solana Mobile, Superteam UK, Solana ID, MonkeDAO, and Solflare as partners as of September 2026.

Choose dm.fun if, choose Cherry if

Choose dm.fun if:

• Your community is one Solana memecoin and you want its chat to exist without setup, tied to the CA.
• Raids, a buy bot, and trending boosts are the daily routine.
• Your members are fine with an embedded wallet and a Solana-only app.
• Polymarket markets and Pokemon packs in the same chat draw your crowd.

Choose Cherry if:

• You need gating beyond a SOL balance: a token, an NFT collection, a domain, a wallet threshold, or a combination, re-verified in the background.
• You want to charge in SOL or USDC, including recurring subscriptions, with a public storefront and reviews.
• Your holders keep their bags in Phantom, Solflare, Backpack, or a Seeker’s Seed Vault Wallet and that wallet should be their identity.
• You want the room reachable from other apps, a website, or your own bot, or to gate Base, Ethereum, or BSC holders.
• Seeker owners are part of your audience: Seeker Club had 8,637 members on 11 September 2026.

To try the Cherry side, create a group at chat.cherry.fun , add a gating rule or a price, and share the @handle. If neither fits, the dm.fun alternatives roundup covers Telegram, Discord with a verify bot, Towns, and others.

FAQ

What is dm.fun?

dm.fun is a Solana-only crypto social app from Matrica Labs. It creates a chat room for every Solana token contract address, with a buy bot, raids, one-tap swaps, DMs, private groups, USDC alpha groups, Polymarket markets, and Pokemon packs. It went officially live on May 21 2026.

Who owns dm.fun?

dm.fun is built and operated by Matrica Labs Inc., a Wilmington, Delaware company whose earlier products are Discord and Telegram gating tools for Solana NFT communities; its Google Play listing names it as the developer as of June 2026.

Is dm.fun safe?

dm.fun’s store copy describes self-custodial wallets provided by Privy and a scam-free environment; we have not audited either claim. The App Store rates it 18+. Its official links point only to dm.fun, app.dm.fun, genesis.dm.fun, and dmfun.foundation; treat any other download domain as unverified.

Does dm.fun have a token?

Yes. $FUN has a supply of 1 billion. Its presale ran October 21 to 22 2025 on Metaplex Genesis and sold 49.5 million FUN for about 8.1K SOL at $0.066 general price; the token generation event was October 30 2025.

Is dm.fun still active?

Yes. On September 8 2026 dm.fun announced chats for tokenized stocks on Solana, live from the moment a contract address exists on-chain. Its iOS and Android listings were last updated on June 25 2026.

Sources

• dm.fun and the dm.fun web app
• dm.fun on the App Store
• dm.fun on Google Play
• dmfun.foundation tokenomics , October 2025