# Paid DM crypto: 0.01 SOL to reach any wallet

> How a paid DM works on Cherry: 0.01 SOL by default as of 2026-09-10, delivered only after the transfer confirms, and nothing sent if you abandon it.


A paid DM is a cold direct message that costs the sender a small on-chain fee so it arrives with a notification instead of landing silently. Cherry is a wallet-to-wallet messenger for crypto: you sign in with a wallet, DM any address, and join token-gated, NFT-gated, and paid group chats, with no phone number, email, or KYC. On Cherry the paid DM fee is a flat 0.01 SOL by default as of 10 September 2026, and the message is only delivered once the transfer confirms on-chain. This page is written for traders who have to reach a wallet that has never heard of them: a whale, an OTC counterparty, or whoever just received funds by mistake.

## What a paid DM buys

One thing: a notification. A free first DM to a stranger is always delivered; the only question is whether the recipient's phone buzzes. A free request sits in the recipient's Requests tab under Hidden, with no push. On the paid path nothing is delivered until the fee confirms: the message waits on the payment and arrives as a notified request under Active, with a push, once the transfer lands.

Cherry sets the fee and it goes to Cherry's treasury. That is the economic idea behind it: identities are free on a wallet messenger, so the recipient's attention is the scarce thing, and that is what carries a price. As of 10 September 2026, 77,420 wallets had signed in to Cherry. Any of them can be reached this way without an introduction.

## How a paid DM works, step by step

You sign once, and the order of events is the part worth understanding.

1. **Prepare.** You choose the paid option, and Cherry builds a transfer of the fee from your wallet to its treasury with your message held against that payment. Nothing is delivered at this point, and a transfer you never sign expires.
2. **Sign.** You approve the transfer in your wallet, and Cherry checks it and broadcasts it to Solana.
3. **Confirm.** Once the transfer confirms on-chain, Cherry delivers the DM as a notified request and sends the push.

If you close the wallet popup or reject the transaction, the payment never confirms and no DM is created, so the recipient never learns you considered writing. The app says so in one line: "Payment did not go through, so your message was not sent."

Two details make the mechanism harder to abuse. The transfer runs from you to Cherry's treasury, so only you sign and Cherry never holds a key that could move your funds. And each transfer carries a one-time payment reference in its memo, which ties one signature to one message, so a confirmed payment cannot be reused for a different DM. The memo names neither sender nor recipient, so the payment on-chain does not reveal who wrote to whom.

If the fee confirms and delivery then hits a problem, Cherry retries the delivery, and a retry never charges you a second time.

| What you send | What the recipient gets | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| "Send for Free" | The message in Requests, under Hidden, no push | Nothing |
| "Send & Notify · 0.01 SOL", transfer confirms | A notified request under Active, with a push | 0.01 SOL |
| "Send & Notify · 0.01 SOL", you reject it in your wallet | Nothing at all | Nothing |

## What the recipient sees

A request card. Cherry's sidebar has a Requests tab with two sub-tabs, Active and Hidden, and the card shows the sender's wallet with four numbers above the decision: Balance, Volume, NFTs, and Domains, plus the account-age badge and the first message under the label "Message". The two buttons are Accept and Decline.

Declining is silent. It moves the request into the decliner's hidden folder and tells the sender nothing: their outgoing request stays pending, so they cannot distinguish a decline from an unopened message. The recipient can undo it later: the hidden room stays recoverable. On your side, a confirmed paid request shows the state "Paid & sent" with the fee on a badge, and the request can still be withdrawn with "Cancel Request".

## How this differs from a Telegram cold DM

On Telegram or Discord, reaching a stranger costs nothing, so the defence has to be a blanket setting: closed DMs, mutual-server rules, or a moderator standing in front of the inbox. Cherry prices the notification instead. Three mechanisms carry that:

- **Wallet age never blocks a cold DM.** A free cold DM already lands in the recipient's hidden requests whatever the sender's wallet age; what a new wallet loses is posting in public groups. The paid route stays open to it, which is safe because the fee confirms before anything notifies. The composer names this: "Free requests are limited for new wallets".
- **The decline gives no feedback.** Cherry's anti-spam design limits senders quietly and avoids hard blocks, so a spammer cannot tune against a signal that never arrives.
- **The filter runs on delivery economics and wallet history.** DMs are end-to-end encrypted with keys derived from your wallet, so Cherry cannot read them and does not word-filter them. Group chats are a different case: they are not end-to-end encrypted, by design, so moderation and bots can work.

## When to pay

Three situations where 0.01 SOL is the cheap option, from how traders use it:

**Reaching a wallet you found on-chain.** You have a whale's address from a token's holder list and nothing else: no handle, no Telegram, no mutual group. A free request will sit in a folder they may never open. A paid one puts a push on their phone.

**Opening an OTC conversation.** Size deals start with a stranger who has to answer within the hour for the price to still be good. Cherry's [OTC escrow](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/otc-escrow/) in the mobile app settles the trade itself once you are both in the conversation, but the first message still has to arrive, and paying for the push is how it arrives while the price still holds.

**Returning funds someone mis-sent.** The recipient is the one who benefits, which is exactly why they are not watching a hidden requests folder for a message from an address they do not recognise. Paying the fee is how a good-faith message gets read the same day.

The decision rule: pay when the value of being read today is worth more to you than 0.01 SOL and the recipient has no reason to check a hidden folder. Send it free when you are one of several people writing to a public-facing wallet that already reads its requests, or when a reply next week is fine.

## Limits and honest caveats

The fee buys delivery with a notification and nothing beyond that. It is charged the moment the transfer confirms, which is the same moment your message is delivered. A recipient who reads it and says nothing still costs you the fee.

A few more limits worth knowing before you spend. The fee is a Solana transfer, so paid DMs are a Solana flow and you need SOL in the signing wallet plus the network fee on top. The price is Cherry's to set and can change, so go by the figure on the payment step, not one remembered from a page. A paid request can still be declined, and you will not be told. A transaction left unsigned in a wallet popup expires, and no message is sent.

Cherry keeps the same economics for group invites: a free invite lands hidden, and the inviter can pay to promote it to a notified invite. Paid group invites cost the same fee as paid DMs.

## How to send one

1. Open [chat.cherry.fun](https://chat.cherry.fun) and sign in with your wallet (the mobile app has the same flow under its own labels).
2. Search for the wallet address or a name such as `alice.sol`, and open the conversation. The card shows Balance, Volume, NFTs, and Domains for that wallet.
3. Write your message in the box that reads "Add a message (optional)...", up to 500 characters.
4. Choose the delivery option. "Free" is labelled "No notification"; the paid one is labelled "Notify · 0.01 SOL" with the note "Sends a push".
5. Press "Send & Notify · 0.01 SOL" and approve the transfer in your wallet. The button steps through "Preparing payment…", "Approve in your wallet…", "Submitting payment…", and "Confirming on-chain…".
6. You know it worked when the card turns into the "Paid & sent" state with the fee shown on a badge.

Want to reach a wallet right now? Open [chat.cherry.fun](https://chat.cherry.fun), paste the address, and decide at the last step whether this message is worth a notification.

Related reading: [DM a wallet address](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/dm-a-wallet-address/) covers the free path and name resolution, [encrypted DMs with no phone and no KYC](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/encrypted-dms-no-phone-no-kyc/) covers the key derivation, [Cherry's anti-spam layers](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/anti-spam/) cover what happens around the fee, and [wallet identity](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/wallet-identity/) explains the profile numbers on the request card. Community owners charging for access should read [paid communities and channels](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/paid-communities-and-channels/) instead, where the money goes to the owner.

## FAQ

**How does a paid DM work?** You write the message, pick the paid delivery option, and sign a transfer of the flat fee to Cherry's treasury. Cherry holds the message until the transfer confirms on-chain, then delivers it to the recipient with a push. If you reject the transaction in your wallet, nothing is sent at all.

**How much does it cost to pay to DM a wallet?** A flat 0.01 SOL by default as of 10 September 2026. Cherry sets that price; the recipient has no say in it. The price can change, so check the figure on the payment step before you approve.

**Can the other side tell that I declined their request?** No. Declining moves the request to your hidden folder and tells the sender nothing. Their outgoing request stays pending, so a decline looks the same to them as a message you have not opened yet.

**Do I get the fee back if the recipient ignores me?** The fee is charged when the transfer confirms, which is the same moment the message is delivered. It buys the notification; a reply is up to the recipient.

**Does the recipient receive the fee?** No. The transfer goes from your wallet to Cherry's treasury: the fee is what Cherry charges for delivery with a notification. What reaches the recipient is the push.

**Can a brand-new wallet send a paid DM?** Yes. The paid path is deliberately exempt from Cherry's wallet-age gate, because nothing reaches anyone until the fee confirms on-chain. A brand-new wallet's free requests still land silently in the recipient's hidden folder, and in the web app the Free option is disabled for a wallet that new, so the paid route is the one it can pick.