Amid the ongoing decline caused by the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Telegram founder Pavel Durov has declared that the messaging platform plans on releasing a series of decentralized cryptocurrency products, which includes a decentralized crypto exchange (DEX) and non-custodial wallet.
Durov made the announcement via his official Telegram channel on Wednesday, saying that the blockchain industry was constructed on the promise of decentralization, however, that ended up being controlled in the hands of some who started to abuse their power.
Being a go-to messaging app for many crypto traders, the messaging app has been able to trade $50 million in usernames in less than a month through its blockchain-based auction platform, Fragment.
Fragment, which took just 5 weeks and 5 people to produce, is developed on top of the Telegram Open Network, a blockchain which Durov abandoned in 2020 under regulatory pressure and later returned to after its community managed to keep it alive.
At this pace, Telegram is now planning on launching additional tools which can help promote decentralization in the crypto ecosystem.
He stated that after this, Telegram is looking forward to building a set of decentralized tools, including non-custodial wallets and decentralized exchanges for millions of people to securely trade and store cryptocurrencies. According to him, in this way, they will be able to fix the wrongs caused by the excessive centralization, which has let down hundreds of thousands of cryptocurrency users.
Notably, this is not Telegram’s first foray into the crypto world. The platform set up The Open Network and its native Toncoin (TON) token back in May 2020. However, the project at that time faced major problems, as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused the platform of executing an unregistered offering of digital tokens and instructed Telegram to return more than $1.2 billion to its investors and pay an $18.5 million civil penalty.
Earlier on Wednesday, backers of the TON network announced a $126 million “rescue fund” to fund crypto projects wracked by FTX’s collapse. At the time of writing this report, Toncoin (TON) is trading at $1.83, up 6.11% on the day after the announcement from the CEO.
