Telegram is the sixth-largest and third-fastest-downloading messenger in the world. Its history is tied to the cryptocurrency market, and the company even tried to launch its own crypto project. Although it didn’t work out, digital assets still are an important part of the messenger. Let's find out how the never-to-be-unveiled crypto project transformed and which crypto tools are now available in Telegram.
Telegram failed crypto project
In 2017, the messenger team announced the Telegram Open Network crypto project. It was supposed to become a layer-1 multi-blockchain system to build up other projects with the native token GRAM to serve the whole ecosystem.
One of the main goals of the project was to outperform the market leaders Bitcoin and Ethereum in terms of scalability and efficiency. In order to do that developers used a set of solutions, including these:
🍕 The Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm, which is way faster than the Proof-of-Work, on which Bitcoin and Ethereum were working that time.
🌐 The Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) protocol, which increases cryptocurrency network stability by reaching consensus even if the connection with some network nodes is lost.
A protocol is a set of rules that ensure the security of transactions in a cryptocurrency network. Nodes are blockchain system participants, or computer devices that can process network information. Nodes should be connected to the network because of the data coordination that the system needs to reach a consensus.
🎳 Sharding technology, which allowed developers to split the total data set into shards to simplify the processing.
The Telegram team raised $1.7 billion for Telegram Open Network development. The messenger’s ICO became the second largest after EOS, which raised $4.2 billion.
The crypto project was officially closed on May 12, 2020, after 2.5 years of work. The team decided that because of the US Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) pressure. The watchdog considered GRAM to be a security, which means that the token sale wasn't legal according to the SEC.
All the technical solutions developers made for the Telegram Open Network stayed open-source. So the data was used by Everscale and The Open Network developers. Each project has its own cryptocurrency: EVER (Everscale) and TON (The Open Network).
The decentralized bank TONBanking founder and head of the TON Dubai Community Marat Minkin is quite sure that despite SEC pressure preventing Telegram's transformation into a crypto messenger, circumstances allowed the TON network to become completely decentralized:
📢 «The SEC is a wonderful organization that slows down the development of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies in general. When they discover a new project, they start an investigation. Anyway, all that happened to the Telegram crypto project is probably for the best, no matter how strange it may seem. TON code is available as open-source, and it is developed by a community that supports DeFi principles. Circumstances made the project independent from the watchdog's decisions and other centralized structures».
What's on the table right now
Telegram actively uses its continuators’ tools. For example, the TON cryptocurrency has become a payment tool for Fragment, a domain name marketplace. A domain name is the name and at the same time the address of the user's page in the messenger, which begins with @. It serves as an identifier for a person, group, chat, or bot in Telegram. The system generates domain names automatically based on the name. Here are examples of Telegram domain names that can be purchased on Fragment:
And here are some TON details:
🪙 The supply is limited. Only 5,000,000,000 tokens will be issued. Now (the end of April 2023), there are 1,221,401,181 TON in circulation.
🪙 The all-time high price of $5.8373 was reached on November 12, 2021, during the active growth of the digital asset market, when bitcoin set a new price maximum. The coin is currently trading at $2.31 (60.50% below the high).
Fragment is just one component of Telegram founder Pavel Durov's new initiative. The developer aimed to increase cryptocurrency market decentralization. Durov presented the initiative on November 30, 2022, right after one of the largest centralized crypto exchanges FTX collapsed.
Durov plans to create a decentralized trading platform and non-custodial crypto wallets (one of the most secure ones on the market, they can be compared with an electronic storage device, with the access key only available to the account creator).
Telegram already has an established audience that may be interested in the company's new products. Those are members of the crypto community who actively use the messenger and members of the crypto market who bet on the launch of the Telegram Open Network.
It is not yet known when other components of the project will be shown to a wide audience. And most likely after such an unsuccessful experience with Telegram Open Network, Pavel Durov's new project will be under special control of regulators.
Marat Minkin believes that Durov's new initiative is a breakthrough that will allow users to control their own assets avoiding the need to trust centralized organizations:
📢 «This is an amazing opportunity for decentralized economic ecosystem development, which can be a key component of the future era of the digital economy. Telegram's decision to integrate TON is not just a huge step for the messenger, but one of the major things for the whole cryptocurrency and blockchain technology development in general. I am sure that this will lead to a revolution in the financial industry».
Crypto in messenger
Telegram has become a popular platform for communication in the crypto community and conduction transactions with digital assets using bots, for example:
👾 BTC banker (@BTC_CHANGE_BOT) is a crypto wallet where you can buy, sell, swap, and store cryptocurrencies.
👾 Bitpapa_bot (@Bitpapa_bot) is a crypto wallet that also allows you to purchase crypto.
👾 SimpleCryptoBroker (@SimpleCryptoBrokerBot) is a Bitcoin trading bot.
There are a lot of similar bots with a wide range of tools. But please be careful using them, because sharing your personal data on the Internet should be done only with additional security measures.
Telegram has an official @Wallet bot that allows you to buy, exchange, and sell cryptocurrencies (bitcoin, TON, and USDT) for fiat directly from the messenger. Transactions are conducted via the P2P service. You can choose from already-published offers or create your own.
The bot also works as a crypto wallet: you can send cryptocurrency to other wallets. Developers propose that soon domain names could be used as a payee ID.
Despite the fact that Telegram failed with its own crypto project, the messenger still uses its own tools modified by other developers. The team still wants to enter the crypto space, and that's why they are developing decentralized tools for digital assets.
Telegram supports the TON token and integrates it into all new projects. This makes TON a promising investment as a messenger with a multi-million audience can provide coins with a very high demand. Don't miss a chance to purchase TON while it is still quite cheap with a licensed itez service.
According to Marat Minkin, the upcoming TON development plans are a game changer in today's complex crypto market landscape with its watchdog's pressure and general market uncertainty:
📢 «It is planned to launch cross-chain transactions and a single protocol for interaction between TON applications and wallets during the first quarter of this year. Tokenomics optimization voting, commission burning mechanisms, etc. makes it clear that TON focuses on the real users needs. As soon as the third quarter, the company will provide cross-chain transfers between the TON and Polygon blockchains and launch a bridge to transfer BTC, ETH and BNB, which brings it a major advantage on the highly competitive DeFi market. By the fourth quarter, TON plans to split the nodes to improve scalability and increase the network's ability to execute a large volume of transactions. TON Network is now more than just a promising Web3 project. It may be assumed that it is on its way to take the lead role on the market and revolutionize financial services».
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This article is not an investment recommendation. The financial transactions mentioned in the article are not a guide to action. Itez is not responsible for possible risks. The user should independently conduct an analysis on the basis of which it will be possible to draw conclusions and make decisions about making any operations with cryptocurrency.
