Popular messaging app Telegram announced on April 26,2022 that users can now send cryptocurrencies via direct messaging on the platform through a wallet bot called ‘The Open Network’ or TON. The built-in blockchain app will process crypto transactions between users free of charge and real time.
Through a Twitter post, TON issued a statement that users can send Toncoin crypto directly in telegram chats.
‘It’s a new way to send Toncoin without transaction fees to any Telegram user. With this service, you’ll no longer need to enter long wallet addresses and wait for confirmations,’ the tweet said.
To help users navigate the new feature, TON included a short video on how the crypto transactions will work through the Telegram platform. This includes the process of installing Telegram’s wallet bot to the attachment menu of user account, which gives access to cryptocurrency through banks, cards, exchanges and other wallets.
Users can quickly click on the wallet icon in the direct messaging feature of the platform to start transactions. Currently, only Toncoin is supported on the peer-to-peer transactions on the Telegram platform.
‘It is hoped that this simplification of the cryptocurrency transaction process will enable greater adoption around the world, and help to embed blockchain payment solutions into people’s daily lives,’ said by a representative from the TON Foundation as reported by TheStreet.com.
The Ton Foundation was initiated by Telegram but was abandoned in 2020 after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States declared it had violated federal securities laws when it started to offer unregistered digital tokens called Grams.
Originally, the project was called the Telegram Open Network (TON) and was developed by its Chief Executive Officer pavel Durov alongside the help of his brother, Nikolai back in 2018.
After that incident, Telegram decided to remove itself from the project. A small cohort of developers picked it up and rebranded it as The Open Network while rebranding Gram as Toncoin.
‘When Telegram said goodbye to TON last year, I expressed the hope that future generations of developers would one day carry on with our vision of a mass-market blockchain platform,’ said Durov in a report by TheStreet.com.
‘I’m proud that the technology we created is alive and evolving. When it comes to scalability and speed, TON is still years ahead of everything else in the blockchain realm. It would have been a shame to see this project not benefiting humanity,’ he added.
Around April of 2022, the TON Foundation managed to raise US$1 billion in donations to kickstart the project.
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