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After months of Elon Musk teasing about turning X into an “everything app” and introducing peer-to-peer crypto payments in 2024, Telegram is now making waves as the first major platform to embrace the Web3 ecosystem.
In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, the founder of Telegram praised Musk for his innovative mindset and efforts to build the SocialFi platform, aiming to empower content creators with fair ad revenue returns.
SocialFi represents a fusion of social media and decentralized finance (DeFi), offering users control over their content without reliance on central authority. Creators retain ownership of their content and data, unlike in Web2 platforms. Users can monetize their engagement and following without limitations, opening up new financial opportunities.
With Telegram’s recent adoption of TON, Tether and other features, the platform has garnered more attention from the crypto community than ever before.
Does TON belong to Telegram?
The Open Network (TON) was initially developed by Telegram, but a subsequent legal battle with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission saw the messaging application abandon its development efforts in May 2020.
The blockchain was originally designed to integrate with Telegram, but its initial attempt was foiled by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Telegram was able to reunite with TON after the network was relaunched by independent developers, making it the only major messaging platform to incorporate Web3.
In a post dubbed “What Was TON And Why It Is Over,” the Telegram CEO said that they made the decision in response to a U.S. court prohibiting Telegram from distributing its Gram tokens anywhere in the world. Durov wrote:
“The US court declared that Grams couldn’t be distributed not only in the United States, but globally. Why? Because, it said, a US citizen might find some way of accessing the TON platform after it launched,” Durov complained.
Durov decided to part ways with TON, which became an independent community of validators, launched the TON blockchain independently from Telegram on May 7.
However, Telegram endorsed TON in September last year, saying the blockchain and the associated token would be its “official Web3 infrastructure.”
“To limit Telegram’s share of TON at ≈10% of the supply, we’ll be selling the upcoming surplus of our TON holdings to long-term investors — under 1-4 years lockup and vesting plan, but at a discount to the market price. This way free-floating TON will get locked up, stabilizing the ecosystem and reducing volatility,” he stated
New Web3 infrastructure
In September 2023, Telegram introduced its long-awaited crypto wallet built on the TON blockchain.
The TON Foundation announced that projects operating on the TON blockchain would receive priority access to Telegram’s advertising platform, Telegram Ads. While the wallet feature is currently available in settings for existing users, a global rollout is scheduled to commence in November, excluding the United States and select other countries.
The integration of the TON wallet into Telegram led to a nearly 7% surge in the price of Toncoin upon the announcement. Following the disclosure of the partnership with Tether, the Toncoin price reached $8.02.