Telegram Founder Wants to Build Crypto Wallets and Decentralized Exchange

On November 30, founder Pavel Durov announced on his Telegram channel that the messaging service is developing a set of decentralized tools.  

According to Durov, the move is a reaction to the recent FTX crash, as the sector ended up becoming concentrated in the "hands of a few to abuse their power. As a result, a lot of people lost their money when FTX, one of the largest exchanges, went bankrupt."

The announcement comes weeks after the launch of Fragment, a decentralized auction platform for unique usernames based on The Open Network, or TON, layer-1 blockchain. Durov claims that in less than a month, Fragment has sold $50 million worth of usernames.

Besides founding Telegram and Fragment, Durov was also behind the first official version of the TON blockchain. Regarding the new decentralized tools being developed, he said:

"The solution is clear: blockchain-based projects should go back to their roots – decentralization. Cryptocurrency users should switch to trustless transactions and self-hosted wallets that don't rely on any single third party."

Durov also mentioned the inefficiencies of legacy platforms, mentioning Ethereum in particular, "which unfortunately remains outdated and expensive even after its recent tweaks." He continued, saying:

"The time when the inefficiencies of legacy platforms justified centralization should be long gone. With technologies like TON reaching their potential, the blockchain industry should be finally able to deliver on its core mission – giving the power back to the people."

Fragment, the most current tool made by the Telegram team and released, was developed in five weeks by five people, according to Durov. The team proposed the idea for the first time in late August, with the goal of using "NFT-like smart contracts" to auction off highly desired usernames. Fragment was released soon after the TON Foundation introduced the TON DNS, enabling users to give human-readable names to websites, smart contracts, and cryptocurrency wallets.

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