How to DM an Ethereum address from your wallet

This guide shows how to DM an Ethereum address from the wallet you already use, including the case that stops most people: the address you are writing to has never signed in anywhere. Cherry (cherry.fun) is a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto. You sign in with a wallet, message any wallet address, and join token-gated, NFT-gated and paid group chats, with no phone number, email or KYC. Ethereum itself has no inbox, so the message is carried off-chain by Cherry and waits at the address until that wallet arrives.

Before you start

Three things, and only the last one costs anything.

• A wallet to sign in with. Signing in is a signature, not a transaction, and it puts nothing on-chain.
• The recipient’s address, copied from an explorer, a mint page or their profile. Check the last four characters twice. A wallet address has no “wrong number” bounce.
• SOL in your wallet, if you want the recipient to get a push notification. The notify fee is a flat 0.01 SOL by default (as of 10 September 2026), paid as a single transfer from your wallet to Cherry’s treasury, so it settles on Solana. You sign that transaction with the wallet you signed in with. The free path needs no balance at all.

Both paths reach the same address. The choice decides whether the recipient gets a push notification.

Step 1: Sign in with your wallet

Open chat.cherry.fun in a browser, or the iOS or Android app, and sign in with your wallet. Nothing else is asked of you: no phone number, no email, no KYC.

You know it worked when the chat list shows its tabs, “All”, “DMs”, “Groups” and “Requests”.

Step 2: Open the address or name you are reaching

Cherry addresses DMs to wallets, and you can DM any Ethereum address. Have the address itself on your clipboard: the steps below assume you are writing to a wallet rather than to a name.

The names Cherry recognises all come from registries on Solana: SNS, whose .sol and .sns are one registry with two spellings, and the AllDomains TLDs, which cover .skr from a Solana Seeker and names such as .bonk. ENS lives on Ethereum, so as of 11 September 2026 an .eth name does not resolve on Cherry. Keep the ENS name for the message body.

Step 3: Write the first message and choose how it lands

The first message to a stranger is written on a card that also shows their balance, volume, NFT count and domains, so you can sanity-check that you have the right wallet before you type. The message box takes up to 500 characters and its placeholder reads “Add a message (optional)…”.

Under it sit two delivery options:

The send button reads “Send for Free” or “Send & Notify · 0.01 SOL” to match. If you abandon the transaction on the notify path, no DM is created at all, which is why the fee cannot be spent on a message that never arrived.

One exception worth knowing. The web app disables the free option for a wallet the wallet-age check still counts as new and flips the choice to Notify; the disabled control explains itself with “New wallets must use Notify”. The check looks at how long your own wallet has been used on-chain, not the recipient’s.

You know it worked when the conversation shows “Waiting for … to accept your request”, or, on the notify path, a “Paid & sent” confirmation with the fee on a badge beside it.

Step 4: Understand what the other side sees

Your message lands in the recipient’s “Requests” tab, which has two sub-tabs, “Active” and “Hidden”. A free cold DM waits in Hidden with no notification. A paid one arrives in Active with a push. Everything after that is the recipient’s call:

• Accepting turns the request into a normal DM for both sides.
• Declining is silent. The request moves to their hidden folder, you are not told, and your side keeps showing an outgoing pending request.
• Ignoring it changes nothing. The message stays where it is.

A recipient who has never signed in to Cherry is still reachable: the conversation is created and waits, and the first time that wallet signs in your message is already there. Writing to a wallet nobody has signed in with costs nothing, so keep the fee for the wallets you need to hear back from this week.

Until you are accepted, you can withdraw the whole thing with “Cancel Request” on the waiting screen.

Where Cherry differs from XMTP apps when you DM an Ethereum address

The usual answer to “message an Ethereum wallet” is an XMTP app. XMTP is the wallet-messaging protocol behind Base App, which Coinbase created by rebranding Coinbase Wallet and which CoinDesk described on 16 July 2025 as built atop Farcaster for social and XMTP for chat, and behind Convos, formerly Converse, which XMTP Labs acquired and open-sourced.

The difference is where a cold message waits. XMTP’s own FAQ answers the question of messaging an address that has never used XMTP with “In theory, yes. However, a wallet address must first create an inbox ID on the XMTP network to be linked to it.” Until the owner opens some XMTP app and creates that inbox, there is nothing to deliver to. On Cherry the room is created at the address on send, and the message is the first thing that wallet sees when it signs in.

Cherry is an app, so the recipient reads your message in the Cherry app. Cherry’s DMs are end-to-end encrypted with keys derived from your wallet signature, so Cherry stores only ciphertext it cannot read. Group chats are not end-to-end encrypted, by design, so moderation and bots can work.

Troubleshooting

• “Domain not found” and “Failed to resolve domain” are different errors. The first means the name has no owner on that registry, the second means the lookup itself failed. Retry the second one before rewriting the name.
• No reply for days: check which way you sent. A free DM is silent by design, and a recipient who never opens the Requests tab has never seen it. Send the notify path instead.
• Wrong address: press “Cancel Request” while the DM is still awaiting acceptance.
• Paid, but the recipient says nothing arrived: once the payment confirms, Cherry retries the delivery on its own. A paid DM that confirmed without delivering can be retried with no second charge, so the fee is never spent twice on one message.
• The recipient’s wallet is a contract or an exchange deposit address: nobody signs in with those. Find a wallet the person controls before you spend the fee.

Related guides

• DM a wallet address is the feature page behind this guide, with name resolution and the encryption model in full.
• Message requests and paid DM explains the Requests folder and the economics of the fee.
• Message a wallet address is the chain-neutral version of these steps.
• Encrypted DMs with no phone and no KYC covers how keys come out of a wallet signature.
• Token-gated chat on Ethereum is the next step once one DM turns into a holders’ room.
• Cherry vs Base App compares the two apps feature by feature.

FAQ

Can I DM an Ethereum address?

Yes. Cherry lets you DM any Ethereum address: sign in with a wallet, open a conversation with the address or name you are reaching, write a first message and send it. The message is end-to-end encrypted and never touches the chain.

What if the recipient has never used a messaging app?

The conversation is still created and waits at that address. The first time the wallet signs in to Cherry, your message is sitting in its Requests tab.

Can I DM an ENS name?

No. Cherry recognises names from Solana registries: SNS (.sol and .sns) and the AllDomains TLDs. ENS lives on Ethereum, so as of 11 September 2026 an .eth name does not resolve on Cherry. Reach the wallet by its address instead.

What does it cost to message an Ethereum wallet?

The free path costs nothing and arrives without a notification. The notify path costs a flat 0.01 SOL by default as of 10 September 2026, paid from your wallet to Cherry’s treasury, and the message is delivered only after that transfer confirms on-chain.

How is this different from an XMTP wallet messaging app?

XMTP’s own FAQ says an address must first create an inbox ID on the XMTP network before it can be messaged. On Cherry the conversation is created at the address immediately and waits for the owner to arrive.

Start at chat.cherry.fun , open the conversation, and send the first message.

Sources

• XMTP documentation, “FAQ”
• CoinDesk, “Coinbase Wallet Becomes ‘Base App’ in Major Rebrand” , published 16 July 2025