I started Dappros in 2018 with a fairly broad ambition: a blockchain-as-a-service platform that combined chat, a wallet, a no-code engine, and Web3 social features into a single super-app stack businesses could brand and ship. Five years later, the product line that came out of that work is Ethora — a chat SDK and AI agent platform used by enterprises in healthcare, finance, insurance, and other regulated verticals.
This post is a founder’s-view retrospective: what we set out to do, where the customer signal took us, what we kept, what we let go, and what’s next. Some of it follows a clean arc; some of it definitely didn’t feel clean while we were living through it.
The original Dappros pitch
The 2018 Dappros platform combined a chat / messaging layer, a digital wallet (with NFT and token-economy support), and a no-code engine for assembling branded mobile and web apps. The thinking was that businesses wanting to ship a Web3-ready application shouldn’t have to assemble five different open-source projects and a hand-rolled chat server to get there.
That thesis was right and wrong in interesting ways. It was right that integrated stacks beat bolt-together stacks for most customers. It was wrong about which parts of the stack would matter most.
What customers actually used
Within about eighteen months we could see the pattern clearly in our usage data: the chat / messaging layer was the most-used part of the platform by an order of magnitude. The Web3 features were valued, but they were not the centre of gravity. They were the differentiator on top of a foundation that was, in practice, a chat infrastructure.
At the same time, two of our larger customers — both in regulated verticals — surfaced a requirement that didn’t fit the SaaS-style original product: they needed self-hosted or dedicated-server deployments, with full data ownership, custom SLAs, and HIPAA-aware operating posture. That requirement turned out to be load-bearing for the whole second half of the journey.
Naming Ethora
We named the chat + Web3 engine Ethora to give the product line its own identity, separate from the Dappros parent. Early Ethora releases — you can still see v22.07 release notes and v22.08 in the archive — were positioned as a “social crypto wallet React Native engine.” That positioning reflected what the product was at the time, not necessarily where it was going.
The shift to enterprise chat + AI
By 2023 the centre of gravity had shifted decisively. The customer base was enterprise-leaning. The features that mattered most were self-hosted deployment, dedicated server options, SLA-backed reliability, HIPAA-aware operating posture, and the ability to extend the messaging substrate with AI bots and RAG-backed agents. AWS recognised Ethora’s growth that year, which was a useful external signal that the repositioning was landing.
We rewrote the product positioning around three pillars: chat / messaging infrastructure, AI agents embedded in chat, and the deployment flexibility (self-hosted, dedicated, cloud) that regulated verticals required. The Web3 features stayed in the platform — they’re a meaningful differentiator for the customers that want them — but they stopped being the headline.
What we kept
- The open-source-first orientation. The Ethora chat SDK and sample apps are still public on GitHub.
- React Native and React as first-class targets. Our customer base lives heavily in the React ecosystem.
- The full-stack philosophy: ship a coherent stack, not a bolt-on of unrelated services.
- The Web3 + wallet + token capabilities for the customers that need them.
What we let go
- The “super-app no-code engine” framing as the headline. It’s still in the product; it’s no longer how we lead.
- The consumer-Web3 audience as a primary target. We follow the enterprise signal now.
- Marketing energy on NFT-specific use cases. Real, still supported, no longer load-bearing.
Where Ethora is heading
The current direction has three threads:
- Deeper AI integration. AI agents that operate inside Ethora chat surfaces, with full data ownership and HIPAA-aware operating posture for healthcare customers. Our Ethora MCP server is one piece of this.
- MCP-first delivery. Exposing Ethora’s capabilities through the Model Context Protocol so AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT, custom) can integrate without bespoke connectors.
- Vertical depth. Healthcare, finance, and insurance verticals get more dedicated tooling — compliance posture, vertical-specific schemas, sample integrations.
A note on the journey
Five years of compounding R&D is the part that’s hard to summarise. The single most important thing we did right was follow the customer signal — even when it meant moving away from positioning we had spent two years building. The single most important thing I’d do differently is start that listening earlier and more deliberately.
For the current Ethora product, pricing, and deployment options, see ethora.com. For the original Dappros platform, pricing and the knowledge base are still live.
Related from Ethora: Ethora — today’s chat + AI agent SDK and platform built on five years of Dappros R&D.