Telegram’s rapid development

Telegram is one of the most popular messaging applications today. According to its own data, the number of users has already exceeded 800 million and continues to grow. It has become an example to follow, because today you can see how the same WhatsApp is gradually copying from functions after functions implemented in Telegram many years ago. Some other competitors are doing the same. Recently, developers have started monetizing their services by offering paid features and ads.

Besides such continuous development, one should not forget the unsuccessful cryptocurrency project of the TON company, which was forced to abandon due to the allegations of American regulators. But all this time it was captured and developed by other developers, led by Pavlo Durov’s former partner on the VKontakte site, another Russian, Andriy Rozov. As it is now known, Telegram plans to launch its own crypto wallet and system of decentralized applications. For this, it will collaborate with its former project TON, which works with China’s Tencent, which owns the aforementioned WeChat, which is entirely controlled by the Chinese government.

Here’s how it will all happen:

• Messenger is running on a dedicated platform where third-party developers, from games to restaurants, can create their own widgets to interact with users. According to Telegram representatives, companies and brands will seize this opportunity “Use JavaScript to create infinitely flexible interfaces that can be run directly in Telegram and will completely replace any website”. Thus, anyone will be able to create not just a bot on Telegram, but a full site for ordering food, clothes, taxis, tickets, interaction with the support service, games and other functions.
• Considering that WeChat itself also offers functions for interaction with the state (paying for utilities, renewing driver’s licenses, receiving notifications, fines, various registrations, certificates – in general, similar to Ukrainian Diya, but with something much larger) number of functions), this can also be expected from Telegram.
• All of this will be connected to a cryptocurrency wallet through which users can pay for services.
• To build this super app platform, Telegram relies on a network of infrastructure partners from both the tech world and the cryptocurrency space, including:
  – Open Network (TON) FoundationIt will provide a ready-to-use enterprise blockchain system.
  – Tencent CloudTON will provide computing resources and network connectivity for projects.
  – chain baseResponsible for data indexing and node distribution products for TON projects. It is a global universal data infrastructure for Web3 that offers automation for indexing and querying blockchain data.
• The TON Foundation this week already announced a partnership with the Tencent Cloud service. “It already successfully supports TON validators and plans to expand its services to help meet TON’s high computing density and network bandwidth needs.”. Authenticators, in web3 jargon, are participants who help authenticate transactions on the blockchain network.

WeChat once pioneered the mini-app model and now offers a parallel built-in payment system, powering millions of mini-apps in China. As the country’s economy slows down due to increasing Western sanctions, Tencent, the owner of the service, is accelerating its efforts to expand abroad. Considering the number of Telegram users, the cloud computing business is potentially quite profitable.

But that’s all A decentralized blockchain system that provides privacy and anonymity is promised but carries some dangers. After all, is it possible to expect anything good from the cooperation of companies from the world’s two largest purveyors of repression, censorship, persecution and espionage? Telegram has long been suspected of collaborating with the Russian government, and Tencent should not even be suspected – this is a confirmed fact. Everything stored on or passing through their servers automatically falls into the hands of Russia’s partner, the Chinese government.