Despite the increasing governmental assault on the cryptocurrency business and the demise of some of its poster children, the underlying decentralized technology is driving internet incumbents into the Web3 domain.
Both Telegram and Line, two of the world’s most popular messengers with hundreds of millions of monthly users, have recently included crypto functionality. E-signing is one of the new features being added to these applications, which is enabled by a business called EthSign.
Singapore-based EthSign, backed by all three Sequoia divisions—Sequoia Capital, Sequoia Capital India, and Sequoia Capital China (formerly named HongShan), intends to deliver a web3 counterpart of DocuSign with the promise of an extra layer of transparency and reliability. Its task is then to persuade the general public that signing contracts on the blockchain is better than the previous way. 
“For one, it’s much easier to authenticate the identity of each signing party and see a history of their interaction with the signed document,” noted EthSign co-founder and CEO Xin Yan, who formerly worked at Huobi’s strategic investment department.
If a typical e-signature service provider is shut down, the record of users’ signatures is also destroyed, according to Yan, a difficulty not related to distributed ledger technology. And, once signed, the data is immutable, which is one of blockchain’s most promising qualities.
EthSign is installed on the blockchain network that hosts Telegram and Line, as well as TON and Finschia. After connecting their crypto wallets to the messengers, users may begin signing papers with EthSign in the same manner they would with DocuSign.
EthSign is already available on Telegram as a tiny app that notifies users of outstanding papers to approve. Users will be requested to link their crypto wallets and scroll to the bottom to sign after a contract is opened. EthSign will now request access to users’ wallet addresses in order to produce tamper-proof signatures on the blockchain. (See the video below for a demonstration of the functionality.)
EthSign is one of several web3 apps built on TON, Telegram’s blockchain partner, who is assisting the messenger in its goal of becoming a WeChat-like super app.
EthSign, which is already available on Line as a web app, has inked a memorandum of understanding with Finschia for further integration in the coming months.
Immutable signatures on messaging applications are not a new concept. In 2018, a tiny app named “Little Protocol” was released on the Chinese messaging platform WeChat. Overnight, the functionality, which allowed users to commit themselves to an agreement using their WeChat IDs and have the text of the contract stored on Ethereum, had over 100,000 views. WeChat, on the other hand, removed the app within 48 hours.
EthSign has been linked to over 250,000 distinct wallet addresses so far. It is currently free to use, but its long-term objective is to become an attestation service platform, charging for attestation, verification, and other user activities rather than adopting the typical SaaS model, which monetizes via subscription costs.
“To attest information on-chain is to bring trust to the on-chain world, where the most promising use case is vampire attack,” Yan added, referring to the Web3 phenomenon in which people are enticed into a forked version of a well-known crypto project that promises greater incentives.
