After launching River mainnet in May 2024, we've seen extraordinary growth and adoption. With over 300,000 members, ~26,500 daily active users, and 200,000+ spaces, River has become a thriving ecosystem for decentralized communication. Today, we're taking the next step by introducing the River SDK: a toolkit designed to make building decentralized real-time messaging apps faster, easier, and more accessible for developers.

The Numbers Tell Our Story

• 300,000+ members with 20% week-over-week growth

• 200,000+ spaces, with 40,000 having active daily conversations

• 254% month-over-month growth in highly active spaces

• 25.1% Week 1 retention in November (up from 15.3% in October)

• ~3,000 new users joining daily

What Does the SDK Do?

If River is the social layer for creating programmable communication spaces, the SDK is the set of power tools to bring those spaces to life. Whether you're building direct messaging apps, collaborative workspaces, or entirely new forms of decentralized communication, the SDK streamlines the process, so you can focus on creating great experiences.

Key features include:

• Autogenerated API Documentation: Spend less time on integration guesswork. Our API docs are generated for you, so you can jump right in.

• Create App Script: Start your project in minutes with a streamlined setup tool that does the heavy lifting.

• Flexible Authentication Options: Choose from MetaMask or bearer token authentication depending on your app's needs.

• Developer Playground: Explore and test SDK features in a hands-on, interactive environment.

Built for Messaging and Beyond

The SDK powers key features for decentralized communication apps, such as direct messaging, channel creation, and secure, encrypted chats—roughly 50% of the core functionality of Towns is baked into the SDK.

Our roadmap includes token gating, threading, and image handling, all shaped by feedback from our rapidly growing developer community.

Success Stories on River

Towns

• An on-chain communication platform backed by a16z Crypto

• Over 200,000 space owners and 300,000+ memberships since October launch

• Features on-chain ownership, end-to-end encryption, and privacy-first reputation system

• Permissionless group chats with community-driven management

Propeller.chat

• Facilitates direct conversations between users and product teams

• NFT-based membership verification while maintaining privacy

• Rewards-driven feedback system encouraging community participation

• Creates collaborative environments for product feedback and improvement

Why It Matters Now

With our platform showing consistent growth—230% month-over-month increase in highly active users and 244% growth in active spaces with >10 members—there's never been a better time to build on River. While the industry has spent years building infrastructure, River's SDK changes the game by offering tools that make it easier to create secure, transparent, and decentralized messaging apps.

Our growth metrics demonstrate not just platform stability, but a thriving ecosystem ready for innovative applications. It's about letting developers focus on what matters: building products that are aligned with the acceleration of new technology, and elevating digital experiences for people to connect in new and meaningful ways.

Get Started

We can't wait to see what you build. Visit docs.river.build for real-time updates and to start building today.