Towns alternatives: onchain group chats compared

A Towns alternative, on this page, means another app where a group chat sits behind an on-chain check. Towns is the onchain group chat app built on Base by Towns Labs: every group is minted on-chain and every membership is an NFT. Five options follow. Cherry (cherry.fun) is one of the five: a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto where you sign in with a wallet, DM any wallet address, and join or create token-gated, NFT-gated and paid group chats.

How we picked these Towns alternatives

An onchain group chat is a chat app where membership is verified on-chain by the app itself. The room reads the wallet you signed in with, checks a balance, an NFT, a domain or a payment, and admits you or does not.

An app made this list if it was publicly usable in 2026, treats a wallet or an on-chain account as identity, and gives a community owner rooms, not a feed. Three entries fail the strict definition and are here because owners compare them anyway: Coinbase Wallet, Farcaster and the Discord or Telegram setup most communities are leaving. Protocols without an app, such as XMTP, are out.

What Towns is today

Towns runs on its own node network, built on Base, with Celestia for data availability. On 11 September 2026 towns.com carried the headline “Discover the best money making group chats” and described Towns Protocol as “an open messaging protocol built on Base that powers private groups and decentralized finance”. On the same date the App Store listed the app as Towns, subtitled “Make Money with Friends”, published by Here Not There, Inc., at version 2.0.6 dated May 12 and rated 4.8 from 94 ratings.

Towns built its money stack in steps: owner fee splits of 0.25% on in-chat trades (June 13 2025), recurring memberships (October 21 2025), USDC pricing with Apple Pay through Coinbase Onramp (January 16 2026), Hyperliquid perps in chat (December 11 2025) and Polymarket bets (January 5 2026). Bots that hold wallets landed October 30 2025, Android on March 20 2026. Towns claims $46M raised led by a16z crypto (July 30 2025) and launched the $TOWNS token on August 5 2025.

Two facts matter if you are weighing a move. Towns announced the February 27 2026 iOS rebuild as “new app, new account”; the App Store description states no phone requirement, though the listing’s privacy label declares a phone number collected for app functionality. And the last aggregate numbers Towns published, 450,000+ groups and 1.7M memberships on February 13 2026, carried the same membership figure it gave in August 2025.

Coinbase Wallet, the app that was Base App

Coinbase renamed Coinbase Wallet to Base App in July 2025 and put the old name back in September 2026, after chief executive Brian Armstrong said in March that the Base app social experiment “didn’t quite work”. The Block reported the rename on 10 September 2026, and the same report lists more than 10 networks, including Base, Solana, Robinhood Chain and Monad, and a trading shelf of perpetual futures powered by Hyperliquid, prediction markets and tokenized stocks. Coinbase announced wallet-to-wallet messaging over XMTP in July 2023 and the store listings still declare messaging and chat, but the rename report says nothing about it.

Passes the definition: no. Gated rooms, roles and paid memberships were never part of the pitch. Choose it if your members want one self-custody app for multichain trading. The head-to-head is Cherry vs Base App .

Farcaster channels and group chats

Farcaster is a social protocol whose community surface is the channel. Its documentation defines a channel as “a public space for your community to have conversations around a topic”, says “anyone can create a channel host by paying a fee in the Farcaster client and choosing a channel name”, and is candid that “channels are being prototyped in the Farcaster client and not fully supported by the Farcaster protocol”. Clients carry direct casts and group chats built on top of it.

Passes the definition: no. Paying to host a channel is not the app checking what a member holds, and channel follows are client data. Choose Farcaster if your community grows by strangers reading public posts. The roundup for that side is Farcaster alternatives .

dm.fun

dm.fun, from Matrica Labs, is a Solana-only crypto social app that opens a chat room for every Solana token contract address, with the chart, a buy bot and raids inside it. Its landing page headline on 11 September 2026 was “CHAT, MEME, AND TRADE. ALL IN ONE.” Wallets are embedded, made by Privy, so members do not bring their own. The app went live on web, Seeker, iOS and Android on May 21 2026, with alpha groups and USDC-billed paid groups; it reported 150K messages on June 15 2026.

Passes the definition: partly. Entry to a room can require a SOL balance, and paid groups bill in USDC, but the room’s identity is the contract address, not a rule you write. Choose dm.fun if your community is one coin and raids matter.

Cherry

Cherry is room-first and the wallet is the account. Sign-in is a signed message (Sign In With Solana): nothing goes on-chain, no gas, no phone number, email or KYC. Display names come from .sol (also written .sns), .skr on Seeker and AllDomains names.

Token-gated chat uses seven rule types Cherry verifies on-chain itself: a token balance, an NFT collection, a Metaplex Core collection, a domain name, a wallet balance or trading-volume threshold, the wallet app used to sign in, and payment. A group combines up to five of them with all or any logic, and members are re-checked in the background, so selling the token ends access. Paid communities and channels take a one-time SOL entry fee between 0.0001 and 100 SOL, or a daily, weekly or monthly USDC subscription between 1 and 10,000 USDC per period; as of 10 September 2026 the owner keeps 70%. Every public group also gets an indexable storefront page on chat.cherry.fun with member reviews.

Markets sit in mini apps , outside the chat core: prediction markets via the Polymarket mini app (979 members on 11 September 2026), perps and tokenized stocks via the Trading Terminal mini app (161 members on 11 September 2026), spot swaps from a $TICKER in the composer, and a trade another member shares in the chat can be copied in one tap. The Mini App SDK also runs inside Solflare, SeekerGram and Seeker Legends as of September 2026, and the Chat Embed SDK drops a Cherry room into any website.

Live on 11 September 2026: Seeker Club, gated by a .skr domain, has 8,637 members, 58,206 messages and 4.9 stars from 41 reviews. Cherry is #1 on the Seeker dApp Store with 4.8 stars from 4,000+ reviews as of September 2026.

Passes the definition: yes, for holdings and payments. The honest limits: messages are stored off-chain on Cherry servers, group chats are not end-to-end encrypted so moderation and bots can work, and a membership is a record rather than an NFT you can resell. The head-to-head is Cherry vs Towns .

Discord or Telegram plus a gating bot

This is what most communities still run, and what Towns was built against. Collab.Land’s site on 11 September 2026 handles “membership verification with precision” for Discord and Telegram across 40+ chains and 30+ wallets, and claims tens of thousands of communities over four years. Guild.xyz, on the same day, sells Discord and Telegram roles with “100+ integrations”, token-gating on holdings and on-chain activity, quests and sybil resistance, citing 1000+ teams.

Passes the definition: no. The chat app knows nothing about the chain; a bot connects a wallet on a separate site, assigns a role, and re-checks on a schedule. That extra hop is the verify-link that scammers clone. Choose it if your members already live in Discord and the room only needs a role. If you are costing the move out, read Collab.Land alternatives .

Towns alternatives on Solana

For a Solana community the real choice is Cherry or dm.fun. Cherry reads the Solana wallet you already use, and domain gating is its rule with no equivalent in the Base apps here: SNS Club, gated by a .sol domain, had 1,455 members on 11 September 2026.

Cherry also supports Base, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain and Robinhood Chain, so a room can check ERC-20 or BEP-20 holders, while domains, Seeker and in-chat swaps stay Solana. The Seeker Club guide covers the .skr gate.

Side by side

Facts as of 11 September 2026 unless dated otherwise above.

Row	Towns	Coinbase Wallet	Farcaster	dm.fun	Cherry	Discord + bot
Core surface	Group chats and channels	Wallet, trading, XMTP chat	Public channels and feed	A room per token CA	Rooms, channels, DMs	Servers and roles
Chains	Base; trades Base and Solana tokens	More than 10 networks	Base first	Solana only	Solana; Base, Ethereum, BSC, Robinhood Chain	40+ via the bot
Wallet and sign-in	Embedded wallet; WalletConnect; new account on iOS (Feb 2026)	Self-custody Coinbase wallet	Farcaster account plus wallets	Embedded Privy wallet	Bring your own wallet; sign a message	Discord or Telegram login plus wallet connect
DMs and encryption	DMs; encryption claimed	XMTP messaging, called encrypted (2023)	Direct casts in clients	DMs since Mar 2026	Encrypted DMs; groups not encrypted	Not encrypted
Gating, and who checks	NFT, token, creator coin; minted on-chain	Not stated	Channel norms set by the host	SOL balance to join	Seven rule types checked by the app, re-verified	Bot checks on a separate site
Paid memberships	USDC, one-off or recurring	Not stated	Fee to host a channel	USDC paid groups	SOL entry or USDC subscription; owner keeps 70%	Via third-party billing
Trading and markets	Hyperliquid perps, Polymarket, 0.25% owner fee	Perps, predictions, tokenized stocks	Not stated	Buy bot and raids	Polymarket mini app; perps and tokenized stocks via the Trading Terminal mini app	None
Bots, apps, embedding	Bots with wallets	Not stated	Mini apps in the feed	Not stated	Mini apps, Chat Embed SDK, API and bots	Bots only
Mobile	iOS, Android	iOS, Android	iOS, Android	Web, iOS, Android, Seeker	Web, iOS, Android, Seeker	iOS, Android
Operator	Towns Labs, $46M raised	Coinbase	Neynar since January 2026	Matrica Labs	Cherry Technologies	Discord or Telegram plus a vendor

Which one to pick

Start with the chain your members already hold. Base community with tradeable memberships and perps in the thread: stay on Towns. Solana community where entry depends on an SPL balance, an NFT or a .sol or .skr name: Cherry. One memecoin with a contract address and a raid habit: dm.fun. Public conversation with builders: a Farcaster channel. Members who will not leave Discord: keep the server and a gating bot, and accept the verify link.

Then check what you charge for. Towns sells a membership NFT and has pitched resale on the secondary market since July 2025. Cherry sells entry in SOL or a USDC subscription.

If the Solana column fits, create a group at chat.cherry.fun, set the rule your members must pass, and claim the handle.

FAQ

What is an onchain group chat?

An onchain group chat is a chat app where the app itself verifies membership against a blockchain: it reads the wallet you signed in with, checks a balance, an NFT, a domain or a payment, and admits you or does not. Towns goes further and mints the group and each membership on Base. Cherry checks holdings and payments on-chain but stores messages off-chain.

What is the best onchain group chat in 2026?

There is no single winner, because the apps split by chain and by what they sell. Towns is the Base option, with memberships minted as NFTs on Base and perps and prediction markets in chat. Cherry is the Solana option, with seven gating rule types, SOL or USDC paid entry and Seeker distribution. dm.fun suits memecoin rooms built around a contract address.

Is there a Towns alternative on Solana?

Yes. Cherry and dm.fun are the Solana-native onchain group chat apps in this list, as of 11 September 2026. On Cherry you sign in with Phantom, Solflare, Backpack or the Seed Vault Wallet and rooms are gated by SPL tokens, NFTs, domains or payment. dm.fun uses embedded Privy wallets and creates a room per token contract address. Towns trades Solana tokens in chat, but its groups, memberships and identity live on Base.

Is Towns still active in 2026?

Yes. towns.com was live on 11 September 2026 and the iOS app was at version 2.0.6, dated May 12. The last aggregate figures Towns published were 450,000+ groups and 1.7M memberships on February 13 2026, a membership number unchanged since August 2025.

Can I move a paid Town to another app?

The members can move, the memberships cannot. A Towns membership is an NFT on Base tied to that Town, so a new app cannot honour it. Owners usually export nothing and re-open a room elsewhere, then gate it by the same token or NFT the members already hold.

Sources

Towns and Towns on the App Store .
The Block: Coinbase rebrands Base App back to Coinbase Wallet , 10 September 2026; Coinbase blog: Say GM with messaging on Coinbase Wallet , July 2023; Coinbase Wallet on the App Store .
Farcaster channels documentation ; Neynar: Neynar is acquiring Farcaster and CoinDesk coverage , 21 January 2026.
dm.fun
Collab.Land and Guild.xyz .
Seeker Club on Cherry , SNS Club on Cherry , Polymarket prediction markets on Cherry , Trading Terminal on Cherry and cherry.fun .