Towns

Towns is a decentralized communications protocol, consumer app and token ecosystem created by Here Not There Labs—renamed Towns Labs—in New York. It was founded by Ben Rubin, Brian Meek and Patrick Fives. Rubin previously built Meerkat and Houseparty, whose group-video product reached enormous scale before Epic Games acquired and later closed it; Meek ran engineering at Skype and served as STRIVR CTO; Fives was a Houseparty engineer and Benchmark entrepreneur-in-residence. Their premise is that Discord/Slack-like communities should not depend on a single corporate operator: creators should own their spaces, set access rules, charge membership, keep data portable/encrypted and govern protocol economics. Towns combines an EVM-compatible optimistic-rollup Layer 2 (Towns Chain), Base smart contracts for spaces/memberships and DeFi actions, and a distributed River/Stream node network that stores and validates encrypted messaging events. Clients use Curve25519 device keys and group-session encryption; nodes see ciphertext, verify signatures/entitlements and commit replicated message miniblocks whose hashes are checkpointed on-chain. The app launched publicly in October 2024 and now markets curated, money-making private group chats that can sell memberships, tip, trade and embed DeFi. Space owners receive portions of fees; node operators and delegators stake TOWNS and earn inflation-funded rewards; protocol ETH fees are designed for TOWNS buybacks/burns; token holders govern upgrades and treasury through the Towns Lodge. The project raised an officially disclosed $46.3m across seed, Series A, Series B and KOL/strategic rounds. Publicly identifiable financings are $25.5m led by a16z Crypto in February 2023 with Benchmark and Framework, $10m Series B led by a16z in April 2025 with Coinbase Ventures and Benchmark, and a $3.3m June 2025 strategic/community round backed by Coinbase Ventures/Base Ecosystem Fund and Echo. The remaining approximately $7.5m is aggregate seed/KOL capital whose dates and allocation are not public; 8-Bit Capital, Signia and strategic angels are associated with the predecessor/lab. This avoids the common error of counting the same $25.5m again in October 2024 when the product launched. The TOWNS token launched August 5, 2025 on Base/Ethereum with roughly 10.128bn initial supply: approximately 35% to team/investors, 5% to HNT Labs and 60% to the Swiss River Eridanus Association/community, with team/investor allocations locked one year then vesting linearly for two years. A launch airdrop was roughly 10%. Official August 2025 materials reported 874.2 ETH of protocol income (third-party trackers later cited 900+ ETH), while the current site displays more than $31.2m in aggregate community earnings—a dynamic marketing counter, not company revenue. Token economics include about 8% initial annual inflation for node rewards. TOWNS has performed extremely poorly as a traded asset: CoinGecko showed roughly $0.00226, $4.8m circulating market cap and $22.9m FDV on August 17, 2026, about 96.8% below its August 2025 all-time high. That collapse, supply/emission ambiguity and investor/team concentration are major risks. So are crypto regulation, smart-contract/node exploits, wallet phishing, moderation of illicit paid groups, metadata/privacy leakage despite content encryption, governance capture and the hard consumer adoption challenge against free centralized networks. Towns' code remains active and its app/site operate, but audited user counts, paid retention and lab revenue are undisclosed. No material Towns-specific exploit, lawsuit or enforcement action was found in this manual review; 0xMacro completed a protocol audit in March 2025.

Founding story

Rubin concluded from losing control of Houseparty after its acquisition that social communities should be governed by participants rather than a platform owner. He partnered with communications/infrastructure veteran Brian Meek and former Houseparty engineer Patrick Fives to build a decentralized group-chat protocol, initially under Here Not There Labs and the River name, that eventually unified around the Towns brand.

Business model

Open-source protocol and consumer app supported by venture capital, token allocations, protocol fees and ecosystem treasury. Community space owners monetize memberships/tips/transactions; node operators earn staking emissions; Towns Labs develops products and holds a token allocation.

Protocol takes fees from space creation, memberships and transactions; ETH-denominated fees can fund token buybacks/burns and DAO/ecosystem operations. Towns Labs may benefit from its 5% token allocation, vested team/investor tokens and developer/ecosystem arrangements. Exact corporate revenue recognition and take rates are not public.

Traction

Public app launched October 2024; token/node network launched August 2025; official whitepaper reported 874.2 ETH protocol-generated income by August 2025 and the current site displays $31.23m total community earnings. Code remained active in 2026. No audited MAU, message volume, paid spaces, retention or developer count is published.

Latest developments

Towns remains live on Base/Ethereum with iOS/Android/web access, curated monetized groups, staking/delegation and exchange trading. Current site displayed $31.23m community earnings in August 2026. Code activity continued in 2026, while TOWNS traded near $0.0023 with a single-digit-million-dollar circulating market cap and roughly $23m FDV, dramatically below its August 2025 peak.