Why do everyone have to try to create another blockchain?
Why can't companies just be honest enough to either name a price up front or make a freemium model or something?
Hopefully this will cause them to reconsider payments like old WhatsApp or something else that aligns with the interests of the users?
Edit: add second part of a broken sentence. Also: the niche that WhatsApp used to hold (paid, reasonable price, good ux, no ads or spying) still isn't too crowded.
Signal is important and I am happy to recommend it but there's a lot of room still for others who want to enter the small communities/group-of-friends messaging space. The best alternatives I have found so far are: MeWe (pretty close to Google+, but with a business model that isn't based on selling data or ads), Telegram and of course still WhatsApp if you can stomach it.