Since launching Radix’s first-ever grants program in December, the projects participating in this round have made some incredible progress along their journeys to becoming core builders in the Radix ecosystem. 

Each week RDX Works will dive into the team behind the project, the journey to their Radix revelation, and what makes their project unique. So, without further ado, here’s all you need to know about Hermes Protocol: A Web3 notification and communications platform.

What is Hermes Protocol?

In today's rapidly evolving world of decentralized technology, businesses and Web3 users seek more efficient and secure ways to communicate and stay informed. Hermes Protocol, a cutting-edge project built on the Radix network, aims to bridge this gap by connecting businesses directly to their Web3 users while maintaining a high level of privacy and anonymity.

Hermes Protocol tackles the communication challenges of Web3 by providing real-time notifications on important on-ledger events, such as new Governance Polls, NFT sales, Validator changes, and more. This innovative approach protects users from financial losses and saves valuable time that would otherwise be spent scouring multiple websites for updates.

Moreover, Hermes Protocol enables dApps to send newsletters without requiring users to share their email addresses, further enhancing privacy and anonymity in the Web3 space.

What makes Hermes Protocol different?

Hermes Protocol stands out from the competition by emphasizing mass adoption and providing an essential tool for free. This approach enables a wider range of users to access the platform and enjoy its benefits. Furthermore, Hermes Protocol aims to be deeply connected with users by integrating seamlessly with popular platforms like Discord, Telegram, and Twitter. This close proximity ensures a high level of user experience (UX) for both end-users and business partners.

The main competition for Hermes Protocol comes from projects like Push (previously called EPNS), Notifi, Dialect, Mailchimp, and SendGrid. Push has the advantage of being the first mover in the space, which has allowed it to gain widespread adoption within the ecosystems it supports. However, Hermes Protocol's business model, which does not charge end-users, is better suited for long-term adoption and Web3 integration.

Notifi, which was first on Solana, charges users via NFTs for gated access and requires businesses to pay substantial fees for integration. While this model may be beneficial in the short term, it has resulted in limited adoption from the end-users perspective.

Dialect shares a similar vision of "actionable notifications" with Hermes Protocol, but they have yet to launch their platform. In comparison to Web2 veterans Mailchimp and SendGrid, Hermes Protocol's edge lies in its ability to cater to the preferences of new generations of users. These users are more closely connected to their Discord and Telegram.

The team believes that building on Radix is the best way forward for any project “Radix simply blew our minds by showing us how it was able to retain atomic composability with throughputs of Millions of Transactions per second while allowing linear scalability of its ecosystem much like the Internet has been growing steadily over time with no “exponential-curve problems.”

One year after Babylon's launch, the Hermes Protocol team expects to achieve its target of 100,000 unique users registered directly or indirectly to their platform. The team is confident that this can be achieved through partnerships with wallet providers such as Xidar, Z3us, Stream, and the official Radix Wallet. Hermes Protocol hopes to expand its user base significantly and create a more vibrant ecosystem by working with these partners.

In addition to user growth, Hermes Protocol is focused on business expansion. The team is targeting almost 200 paying businesses, using both inbound and outbound marketing channels. By achieving this goal, the platform will be in an excellent position for exponential yet sustainable growth. They aim to have between 30k to 50k MRR and self-service customers coming in almost on a daily basis without the need for customer support calls.

Hermes Protocol aims to drive user acquisition through its outgoing marketing services. They hope to see several Radix businesses creating campaigns to find users within the Radix ecosystem or even outside the ecosystem and convert existing Web3 users into new Radix ones. This would benefit businesses on the platform and increase the overall user base, which is crucial for the long-term success of Hermes Protocol.

In summary, the success of Hermes Protocol one year on from Babylon would be characterized by significant user growth, increased revenue, and a thriving ecosystem of businesses utilizing the platform's marketing services to find and convert users. With its ambitious targets and partnerships with leading wallet providers, the team at Hermes Protocol is well-positioned to achieve these goals and drive growth within the Radix ecosystem.‍

Who are the founders?

Sérgio

Sérgio is one of the three founders of Hermes Protocol. He has a deep passion for online communities and software automation. Sérgio's interest in communities began at a young age when he started taking on roles with responsibility within online forums, such as becoming a moderator or an administrator. As he grew older, he focused a lot on software automation.

Sérgio's work experience includes stints at Aptoide and Talkdesk. He later became Portugal's first professional esports manager, organizing several in-real-life esports events in Lisbon. 

This passion ultimately led him to co-found a gaming events company in Portugal, which was responsible for creating the largest gaming area in Portugal, located inside the biggest music festival called Rock in Rio. All the gaming activities added together had about 380k attendees over the span of 4 days. After that, Sérgio moved to Belgium, where he worked with AXA.

Sérgio's passion for community-building and automation perfectly fit Hermes Protocol's vision to connect online communities and streamline event-driven automation. 

Ana

Ana is another founder of Hermes Protocol. She is a logical thinker with a passion for data analysis and fencing. Ana started practicing fencing at the age of 12 and continued to pursue it passionately. She completed her Master's degree in Management but quickly changed her path toward data modeling, working at several European banks as a risk modeler. In her free time, Ana started to learn several programming languages and became a front-end developer.

Ana met Sérgio while working in Belgium, and together they founded Momentum One, a Digital Services company helping Web3 projects launch their projects off the ground. A year after that, looking at the needs of their clients, the idea of Hermes Protocol was born. With her data modeling and front-end development skills, Ana played a crucial role in developing Hermes Protocol platform.

Duarte

Duarte is the third founder of Hermes Protocol. He is a talented full-stack developer with a passion for bots and automation. Duarte met Sérgio in an online gaming community called "Among Us Portugal" and played a significant role in developing a community bot that streamlined gaming sessions. Duarte has experience in both front-end and back-end development, but he has always preferred the latter. He also has extensive experience in networks and system management, giving him a broad range of skills and expertise to draw from.

With a few years of experience in software development, Duarte has become an expert in building bots and automation that streamline processes and make life easier for users. He has a passion for automation and enjoys simplifying tasks that would otherwise be tedious or time-consuming. Whether building bots for gaming communities or businesses, Duarte always aims to make his users' lives easier.

How did the project get started?

Hermes Protocol was founded by Sérgio, Ana, and Duarte. Sérgio and Ana first met while working in Belgium and started dating. A year later, they realized they both had an entrepreneurial mindset and decided to create a free-time project together. 

They first attempted to start a dropshipping store, but it ended up being a failure. However, the experience taught them a lot, and Ana learned how to make WordPress websites in the process. Several months later, their friends started asking for their help to develop their websites, and that's when Momentum One was born.

Momentum One aimed to help people with IT problems, and Sérgio and Ana found Terra quite early, shortly before Anchor Protocol's launch. They were searching for a way to fight inflation from their savings from working abroad to eventually buy a house together. As Sérgio mingled with the Anchor community and asked questions to see if they could trust the project, he realized that the Discord server severely lacked finesse. 

So, he went on to talk with TFL's community manager and proposed to improve it. The work done was so great that other projects building on Terra also wanted such a premium-looking Discord server for their online communities, and that's how Momentum One went from two founders to a team of ten.

Duarte was the first employee that Sérgio and Ana hired for Momentum One. They needed someone knowledgeable in Discord, and Duarte was the only bot developer they were sure of at the time.

Hermes Protocol was born during the second hackathon of Terra when Sérgio, Ana, and Duarte put together all the knowledge of Web3 that they had gathered on Momentum One and came up with the first idea of Hermes Protocol - a notification platform that would deliver on-chain notifications to users on Discord and Telegram.

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For more information on the project, head to the website, follow the project's official Twitter account or join Hermes Protocol Telegram channel.

To stay in the loop with the Radix Grants Program and be first to hear about updates on the upcoming cohort 2, join the developer program.