Block CEO Jack Dorsey’s decentralized peer-to-peer messaging service Bittat saw a surge in downloads from the country of Madagascar, an African island, amid protests after continuing similar increases in unrest in Nepal and Indonesia in early September.
The Bitcoin open source developer under the X-handle CalleBTC, working on messaging services, said on Sunday “Downloading Bittat to Spick in Madagascar,” along with screenshots of news reports of the protest.
“Vichat” is trending on Google search
Callebtc Bitcoin did not share any specific download numbers, but Google Trends’ “Bitchat” search shows Madagascar’s Friday (over 90 days) spikes, especially Antananarivo.
Google Trends tracks how popular a search term is over a certain period, with 100 being the highest, indicating “peaker popularity”, and 0 being low interest, or “sufficient data”.
At the same time, according to Google, phrases like “Bitchat Download” and “How to Use Bitchat” are one of the top five queries and are tagged as “breakout topics.”
Chrome-Stats has been downloaded 365,307 times since Bitchat’s release, with over 21,000 people downloading on the last day and over 71,000 people downloaded last week. However, it does not specify the area that caused most of the download.
Protests against power and water cuts
Protests broke out in Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo on Thursday, with some demonstrators clashing with police and exploding with reports of looting over ongoing water and power losses, causing the Energy Minister to be fired.
Madagascar authorities also imposed a curfew from dusk to dawn to curfew in order to curb even more uncertainty. More demonstrations were held nationwide on Fridays and Saturdays.
It comes just weeks after the surge in Vichat downloads in Nepal amid a string of violent protests against corruption. The result was a short-lived social media ban, forcing protesters to search for other ways to communicate and coordinate. Indonesia also showed a similar increase in downloads after corruption-related protests broke out.
Most of the population in Madagascar has no internet access
Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world. Of a population of just under 32 million, Global Technology Data Platform Datareportal estimates that in early 2025 there were only 6.6 million people in Madagascar with internet access.
The platform also estimated that over 18 million mobile connections were active in the country in early 2025, saying, “these connections may only include services such as voice and SMS, and may not include access to the Internet.”
Related: A decentralized social media app to challenge Big Tech’s “Walled Gardens”
Dorsey released the beta version of Bitchat in July. Using Bluetooth mesh networks for encrypted communications without the Internet, according to the white paper, the network is completely decentralized without dependencies on the central server, account, email address, phone number to register, or infrastructure.
Encrypted messaging services support the EU’s chat control laws
The European Union is in the process of cracking down on private messaging services. As lawmakers are trying to pass on “chat control” laws that undermine encrypted messaging, services such as Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, and other services must allow regulators to screen messages before they are sent encrypted.
There are 15 EU countries supporting the proposal, but exclude the 65% population threshold required for transit. Germany, which has a vital vote, has yet to take a final stance.
Crypto proposes Diode CEO Hans Rempel and Brickken’s Elisenda Fabrega, predicting that the proposal could drive users to a decentralized Web3 platform designed for privacy by default.
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