Towns app review 2026: onchain group chat vs Cherry

This Towns app review is for someone deciding in September 2026 where to run a crypto group chat. Towns is a group chat app built on Towns Protocol, an open messaging protocol on Base: every group, called a Space, is minted on-chain, and membership is an ERC-721 token you must hold to read and write. Cherry (cherry.fun) is a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto: 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. The verdict: Towns makes the group itself an on-chain asset on an EVM stack; Cherry keeps the group off-chain and puts the chain work into who may enter and who gets paid, on Solana first.

What the Towns app is

Towns is two things with one name. Towns Protocol is the open protocol: an EVM-compatible L2 chain, stream nodes and smart contracts on Base, where anyone can create Spaces its docs call “ownable”, with “on-chain subscriptions” and “end-to-end message encryption”. The Towns app is the client on top: app.towns.com, iOS and Android. The H1 over its Explore grid reads “Discover the best money making group chats”, and a counter read “TOTAL EARNINGS $31,232,500” on 11 September 2026.

Towns’ membership docs describe an ERC-721 token with a default one-year expiry, renewable at the price it was bought at, and a supply cap the owner sets.

The milestones Towns has announced: $46M raised with a16z crypto leading (30 July 2025), the $TOWNS token launched (5 August 2025), recurring memberships (21 October 2025), bots (30 October 2025), Hyperliquid perps in chat (11 December 2025), Polymarket (5 January 2026), USDC pricing and Apple Pay through Coinbase Onramp (16 January 2026). On 13 February 2026 Towns reported 450,000+ groups and 1.7M memberships, the same membership figure it gave on 8 August 2025.

Two weeks later, Towns rebuilt. On 27 February 2026 it said users got the most value from small chats with friends, not large communities, and launched an iOS app with a new account, friends added from phone contacts, and AI agents that place bets and open trades in the chat. The App Store version history dates it: 2.0.0 shipped on 19 February 2026 noting “Towns is now designed for friends :)”, then 2.0.6 on 12 May 2026 noting “Now you can chat with your Towns communities in the group chats again”.

What Cherry is

Cherry is a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app built by Cherry Technologies, S.A., 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 the account: sign-in is one signed message, nothing on-chain and no gas. Cherry started on Solana and also supports Base, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain and Robinhood Chain, so a room can gate on ERC-20 or NFT holders on Base and you can DM an Ethereum address . Rooms are public, private, gated or paid, and every public one has an indexable storefront page. Cherry hosts 200+ communities and 1M+ messages as of September 2026, and the Cherry Announcements channel had 77,446 wallets on 11 September 2026. More: about Cherry .

Towns vs Cherry at a glance

Both apps sell gated and paid group chat. They split on chains, wallet model, onboarding and reach outside the app.

Onboarding: a phone number or a wallet

Towns’ web app offers social login or a wallet connection, and every account gets an embedded wallet. The February 2026 iOS app is a second account built around your phone contacts, and its App Store privacy card lists Email Address and Phone Number under “Data Linked to You” (11 September 2026).

Cherry has one account and it is your wallet. Sign one message with Phantom, Solflare, Backpack or the Seed Vault Wallet and your .sol or .skr name becomes your display name. The wallet holding your tokens is the one other people see, which is what makes gating work without a verification bot. The trade-off: no embedded wallet for someone who has never held crypto.

Gating and paid access

Towns puts gating and payment in the same object. The Space contract mints a Member NFT after checking entitlements; for a cross-chain check it broadcasts a request to a node, which reads the member’s linked wallets before the NFT mints, as its cross-chain entitlement docs describe. That check happens when you join. Because memberships are ERC-721, a capped Space can trade on secondary markets, which Towns pitched in July 2025 as demand finding its own price.

Cherry separates the two. Token-gated chat rules are checked against the chain by Cherry: a token balance, an NFT or Metaplex Core collection, a domain such as .sol or .skr, a wallet balance or volume threshold, the wallet you signed in with, or a payment. A room combines up to five with all or any logic, and members of gated public rooms are re-verified in the background: sell the token and access goes with it. SNS Club, gated by a .sol domain, had 1,455 members on 11 September 2026.

Paid communities and channels take one-time entry in SOL or recurring USDC through the official Solana Subscriptions and Allowances program, with 70% to the owner. A lapsed subscription paywalls the member without removing them. The two recurring models are one idea with different plumbing: an expiring NFT on one side, an authorized USDC pull on the other.

Trading, perps and prediction markets

Towns has had ticker-to-trade in chat since April 2025, and owners earn 0.25% of trades made inside their Town. It then stacked markets on top: Hyperliquid perps in natural language, then Polymarket betting, and by the February 2026 rebuild an agent placed both for you.

Cherry keeps that work in the conversation. Type $TICKER or paste a contract address and the message renders a card with price and market cap; Buy opens a Jupiter Swap modal on web, and on iOS Swap and Buy are outbound links, per App Store rules. A trade another member shares can be copied in one tap. Perps and tokenized stocks live in the Trading Terminal mini app (chat.cherry.fun/@trade , 161 members on 11 September 2026), prediction markets in the Polymarket mini app (979 members the same day). OTC deals settle through on-chain escrow in the Cherry mobile app, which refunds both sides when a deal times out. Towns publishes no OTC escrow product.

Developer surface: bots, mini apps and reach

Towns is the more open protocol and the more closed distribution. Anyone can build a client: its docs publish a React SDK, a bot framework where bots hold wallets, and a mini app layer that “follows the Farcaster miniapp specification” with Ethereum wallets. Those mini apps do not leave Towns: they run in the Towns client, for Towns users.

Cherry’s developer surface points outward. A Cherry mini app runs inside a chat room with the user’s Solana wallet and the room’s context, and the same SDK is live inside Solflare, Mattle.fun, SeekerGram and Seeker Legends as of September 2026, so a builder reaches those audiences without shipping a native app. The Chat Embed SDK goes further out: mount a Cherry room on any site or dApp, and every embed auto-creates a community inside Cherry.

Solana, Seeker and where each app lives

Towns trades Solana tokens; it does not run on Solana. Gating is EVM contract logic, entitlement modules must be deployed to Base, and the cross-chain doc adds Ethereum Mainnet, Optimism, Arbitrum and Polygon, with “other chains are planned to be added in the future” in September 2026. A Solana wallet is not a Towns identity, and Towns publishes no Solana Mobile distribution.

Cherry’s distribution is the inverse. It ships on the Solana dApp Store for the Seeker phone, where it ranks #1 with 4.8 stars from 4,000+ reviews and about 3K daily active users as of September 2026. Seeker Club , gated by a soulbound .skr domain, is Cherry’s largest Seeker community, with 8,637 members and 58,206 messages on 11 September 2026. For an EVM-first community this row does not matter; for a Solana one it decides.

Is the Towns app safe?

Towns Protocol documents end-to-end encrypted messaging, access is enforced by on-chain entitlements, and the iOS listing carries an 18+ age rating on the US App Store. Two caveats come from Towns itself: in-chat trading lists tokens permissionlessly, which is why Towns warned users about fake TOWNS tokens in July 2025, and the team reported maintenance or sign-out incidents on 1 May 2025, 16 to 17 July 2025 and 20 February 2026.

Cherry’s caveats sit beside it. DMs are end-to-end encrypted; group chats are not, by design, so moderators and bots can read what they moderate. Messages are stored off-chain on Cherry servers, so Cherry makes no decentralisation claim about messaging. Against spam: brand-new wallets cannot post in public rooms, and a stranger’s first DM lands in Requests silently unless the sender pays 0.01 SOL (10 September 2026).

Choose Towns if, choose Cherry if

Choose Towns if:

• Your community is on Base or another EVM chain and you want the group to be an on-chain asset with a capped, resellable supply.
• You want Hyperliquid perps and Polymarket markets handled by an agent in the chat.
• You are building a client or a bot on an open protocol with published contracts, nodes and an SDK.

Choose Cherry if:

• Your holders sit on Solana, or across Solana, Base, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain and Robinhood Chain, and you want one room that checks all of it.
• You want members to keep the wallet they already trade from, with no phone number, email or second account.
• You need gating beyond a token balance: a .sol or .skr domain, a wallet threshold, or paid entry with 70% to you.
• You want the chat inside your own product, your app inside someone else’s, or a community that owns Seekers.

To try the Cherry side, open chat.cherry.fun , connect your wallet, and create a room or search for one. If neither app fits, the Towns alternatives roundup covers the field.

FAQ

What is the Towns app?

Towns is a group chat app built on Towns Protocol, an open messaging protocol on Base. Every group, called a Space, is minted on-chain, and membership is an ERC-721 token a member has to hold to read and write. The iOS app comes from Here Not There, Inc.; the web app runs at app.towns.com.

Is the Towns app safe?

Towns Protocol documents end-to-end encrypted messaging and enforces access with on-chain entitlements, and the iOS listing is rated 4.8 from 94 ratings with an 18+ age rating, as of 11 September 2026. Two caveats come from Towns itself: in-chat trading lists tokens permissionlessly, which is why Towns warned about fake TOWNS tokens in July 2025, and the team reported maintenance or sign-out incidents in May 2025, July 2025 and February 2026.

Is Towns a messaging app or a protocol?

Both names are in use. Towns Protocol is the open protocol on Base with its own stream nodes and smart contracts, and the Towns app is the client Here Not There, Inc. ships on web, iOS and Android. Its home page is titled Towns Protocol and calls Towns an open messaging protocol built on Base, as of 11 September 2026.

Where do I download the Towns app?

The web app is at app.towns.com and the iOS app is on the App Store under app id 6504000393, free and requiring iOS 17.4 or later, as of 11 September 2026. Towns announced Android on 20 March 2026.

Does Towns work on Solana?

Partly. Towns announced in-chat trading of Base and Solana tokens on 3 April 2025, but its gating runs on EVM contracts: the docs list Base plus Ethereum Mainnet, Optimism, Arbitrum and Polygon for cross-chain entitlement checks, as of 11 September 2026. A Solana wallet is not a Towns identity, and there is no Solana Mobile distribution.

Sources

• towns.com
• Towns docs: Introduction , Space Membership , Roles and Entitlements , Cross Chain Entitlements , Mini Apps
• Towns on the App Store