Pakistan is building a national chat app on ICP, says DFINITY founder

Dominic Williams says the messenger targets more than 100 million users and runs on a dedicated Pakistan subnet Most governments that want a national messaging app go shopping at a big cloud provider. Pakistan went to a blockchain. DFINITY founder Dominic Williams announced on October 28, 2026 that Pakistan is developing a national chat and messenger application on Internet Computer (ICP) infrastructure. The intended audience is more than 100 million users. What Pakistan is building The app covers the features people now treat as table stakes in a messenger. That means instant messaging, plus audio and video calls. It runs on a dedicated Pakistan subnet, branded the “Pakistan Cloud Engine.” The setup is designed to meet data localization requirements set by the Pakistani government. The project is not starting from a blank page either. Updates from August and September 2026 indicated the app was nearing feature completion on its core functions. The OpenChat team has been actively contributing to development within the ICP ecosystem. From memorandum to messenger The roots of the project go back to February 2026. That month, Pakistan’s Digital Authority and the DFINITY Foundation sig...