Yesterday, the founder and CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov, announced on his official channel that Telegram has launched an in-app browser that allows the viewing of decentralized websites.
The message from Durov actually includes several other pieces of information, but the most interesting ones are those related to TON.
The message from the CEO: mini-app store and the browser for decentralized services on Telegram
Durov wrote that yesterday was a great day, because the Telegram Browser and the Mini-App Store were being launched.
He revealed that the new in-app browser of Telegram allows users to switch from viewing websites to messaging, and it is equipped with all the features one can expect from a browser (search, bookmarks, tabs).
But he emphasized that it is even more important that the new Telegram Browser allows people to also view decentralized websites, called TON Sites.
He added:
“This opens the world of blockchain-based web (often called Web 3.0) to almost a billion users”.
In fact, it should be remembered that Telegram has reached 950 million active users monthly.
Durov also wrote that now users can gift Stars to their friends, and on the Mini-App Store you can find examples of apps that accept Stars. The catalog of mini apps can be found under the Search section of the “App” tab.
To try the new features, you first need to update the Telegram app. To open the new browser, you need to open a link such as tonsite://getting-started.ton after updating.
Telegram and TON
TON (The Open Network) is the blockchain on which all Web3 services provided by Telegram are based.
The first Web3 service provided by Telegram was the crypto wallet, launched many months ago, while later on, mini-apps that paid users in Toncoin were launched.
Toncoin in turn is the native cryptocurrency of TON.
Although in theory TON is a decentralized crypto project, in reality it is in all respects the Telegram crypto project.
Technically they could also be considered two separate things, but in reality, in concrete terms, TON wouldn’t even exist without Telegram.
The entire success of TON is linked to Telegram’s Web3 initiatives, and it seems the company is betting a lot on it.
Decentralized websites accessible through the new in-app browser are, for example, one of the internal applications on Telegram of TON, as they are based on this blockchain.
By now Telegram has become a crypto app in every respect, and probably the most important Web3 project in the world.
It should be remembered that Bitcoin is not a Web3 project, but a cryptocurrency based on a truly decentralized network, and that it is in no way in competition with TON. The Telegram blockchain, on the other hand, seems more like a competitor to Solana, and ultimately perhaps even to Ethereum.
The token Toncoin (TON)
Toncoin (TON) is now steadily the ninth cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization. However, it seems inevitably destined to surpass at least Dogecoin, even though in the long term it appears to have the potential to approach even XRP, or even Solana and BNB.
Despite yesterday’s news, however, its price today loses 0.8%.
It should be emphasized that TON is even at +194% since the beginning of the year, which is the best price performance this year among the top twenty cryptocurrencies in the world by market capitalization.
In the last thirty days, however, it is losing 11%, although in the last seven it has recovered a +2.5%.
At this moment the key price threshold seems to be $6, because it hasn’t fallen below this level since mid-May.
The all-time high was recorded in mid-June above $8.2, and the current price of $6.8 is only 17% lower.
This year has recorded two important rallies.
The first, the major one, between the end of February and the beginning of April, with the price going from $2.1 to $7.2 in just over a month.
The second one started just after the April correction, and it led to new all-time highs in mid-June.
The success of Web3 on Telegram: the arrival of the browser for decentralized services
The mini-apps, launched on Telegram just a few months ago, are achieving enormous success.
By now, there are more than 500 million Telegram users who interact monthly with mini-apps, among which the crypto game Hamster Kombat stands out, having already attracted more than 300 million players.
The success of Telegram’s crypto turn is striking and evident, and it is probably due also and above all to the fact that one can easily exchange TON from one wallet to another.
Moreover, although the crypto wallet integrated within the app is custodial and centralized, an app has also been released that allows the use of a non-custodial wallet for TON.
It’s called Tonkeeper, and it’s an app with which you can have your own TON wallet, complete with a seed to save and keep on your own, and to which even Telegram cannot access in any way.
Probably it is also thanks to the decentralization of TON that the crypto breakthrough of Telegram is having this success, given that the real great revolution of cryptocurrencies is precisely decentralization.