Telegram Introduces Self-Custodial Crypto Wallet Globally - Fierce Competition In The Crypto Wallet Industry
At the TOKEN2049 event taking place on September 13 and 14, in the stream of notable information about the DeFi world, Telegram - a giant of social messaging networks often used by famous people on the Internet. cryptocurrency market - launched the first Self-Custodial Crypto Wallet.
What are their strengths? How do they continue to compete and survive in the crypto wallet industry when there are so many big players in the market such as the Bitcoin.com Wallet app, Meta Mask along with Stella's Trust Wallet?
And will that competition push the crypto wallet industry to continue to grow and improve its services the way Ethereum has researched and created Account abstraction (AA) to better support users? when users accidentally forget their private key in their wallet. Learn more with FinFan about the above.
Telegram - a giant in the messaging social networking industry - is determined to launch its Self-Custodial Crypto Wallet
Telegram - a giant in the messaging social networking industry
According to Wikipedia Telegram first launched for iOS on August 14, 2013, and on Android on October 20, 2013. Telegram has five data centers in different regions of the world, while the operations center is based Headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Telegram offers optional end-to-end encrypted chats. Cloud chats and groups are encrypted between clients and servers so that data cannot be accessed by ISPs and other third parties on the network.
Users can send text and voice messages, make voice and video calls, and share an unlimited number of images, documents (2 GB each), user locations, stickers videos, contacts and audio files. Users can also follow channels.
Telegram is determined to launch its Self-Custodial Crypto Wallet
And now, this giant decided to announce the project about non-custodial crypto wallet after 3 years of incubation and opened up about this project implemented with TON Foundation in the biggest event of the year in the Web3 world.
The reason this event was postponed for up to 3 years is because Telegram was accused by SEC authorities of legal challenges and regulatory issues when their initial coin offering (ICO) had violated securities laws. However, recently, after many failures regarding its accusations against companies in the crypto industry (most recently with Grayscale), the SEC has also made more lenient decisions toward companies.
*As a result, the TON blockchain project was discontinued, and the funds raised through the ICO were returned to investors as part of the settlement. This development had a significant impact on the cryptocurrency industry and highlighted the regulatory challenges faced by blockchain projects and ICOs in the United States.
The wallet is the brainchild of a company called The Open Platform (TOP), which includes a wallet development team and a venture-building division, the TOP Labs, that works closely with the TON ecosystem and has a portfolio of TON-based apps. It is currently accessible to Telegram’s extensive user base of 800 million individuals worldwide. The seamless integration of the TON wallet within the Telegram platform led to a significant uptick in the price of Toncoin, with its value surging by nearly 14% upon the announcement.*
Will Telegram's presence make the competition between giants in the crypto wallet industry fiercer?
Crypto wallet market today
At a glance, it can be seen that the crypto wallet market has been developing very strongly. From big guys that have been around for a long time like Meta Mask, Trust Wallet, and Coinbase Wallet to later new wallets like Core, Glow, Fortmatic, Biski, etc.
Each wallet launched is coded on a different platform application such as Ethereum, Solana, Binance, etc., and they all know how to take full advantage of the ecosystem and the strengths that the platform gives them to be able to develop.
An example of this taking advantage is MetaMask - a popular established browser extension that functions as a cryptocurrency wallet connected to the Ethereum blockchain.
MetaMask allows users to interact with the Ethereum ecosystem, which hosts a vast universe of decentralized applications (Dapps), without having to download the entire blockchain on their devices. Therefore, it is one of the best Ethereum wallet solutions for easy access to decentralized exchanges (DEXs), gaming platforms, gambling sites, and many other applications.
Clearly, with the above example, Meta Mask has thoroughly applied the advantages of Ethereum in terms of diversity, breakthrough, and innovation to develop and increasingly perfect its wallet according to what Ethereum has been updating (including the upcoming issue of Account abstraction).
However, the weakness here is that Meta Mask is developed on the Ethereum platform, so security issues, error debugging, etc. all depend on the second largest company in this crypto (like the website created by Wordpress in Web2).
Telegram's strength is in issuing its own non-custodial crypto wallet.
He is a big man and is very knowledgeable about the crypto field as most users use Telegram to update and open channels about crypto when this market is still new and not yet recognized in many countries. Up to now, Telegram has been able to launch a custom crypto wallet with the support of these loyal users.
Is the lesson from Facebook (or after is Meta) applications for Telegram in the process of developing new technology?
However, this release of Telegram will also face many difficulties in terms of legality as well as in terms of technological competition when the giants backing or serving as the foundation for competitors' wallets are all from the crypto industry, not a messaging social network.
Not to mention, Telegram's messaging social networking platform is also built on Web2 technology techniques. If it wants to enter the Web3 market, this giant may have to learn Facebook's lessons on Metaverse with founded and renamed to Meta company in 2021.
After the conversion, the revenue of Facebook or Meta later decreased significantly because users still defaulted to thinking that Facebook is simply a social network, and Meta's idea of creating Metaverse was not remarkable compared to technology companies.