In a recent announcement, Pavel Durov, CEO and founder of Telegram, a cloud-based, globally accessible messenger application, has revealed its plans to build a decentralized exchange and non-custodial wallets following the collapse of FTX.
The CEO took to his Telegram channel to announce this initiative and referred to it as a step toward the application’s advancement in the crypto sector.
Currently, the crypto space is shaken by the collapse of the FTX exchange, putting to test investors’ confidence and trust. However, Durov sees this as an optimum opportunity to build decentralized and trustless alternatives.
Telegram would build decentralized exchanges and nun-custodial wallets, enabling people to use and trade their crypto holdings safely. The CEO sees this as a step toward fixing issues caused by excessive decentralization, a concern that has bugged investors, regulators, and institutions equally.
“This way, we can fix the wrongs caused by the excessive centralization, which let down hundreds of thousands of cryptocurrency users.”
Durov also revealed that he foresees the platform being developed to be feasible for its clients’ use and stated the example of Fragment’s development. Fragment is Telegram’s decentralized auction platform and, interestingly, was developed in only five weeks with five people and was built on the Telegram Open Network. The CEO initially abandoned the Telegram Open Network due to the immense pressure from the regulation, but the blockchain community helped keep it alive.
Telegram has been comparatively successful in initiating and developing its crypto infrastructure, given that it sold over $50 million in usernames. The usernames were sold through the blockchain-based auction platform, i.e., Fragment. The Fragment’s success created a drive in Durov to build a decentralized platform to benefit the masses.
Durov acknowledges the loss of faith in crypto firms (ironically all of these collapsed firms were regulated) and calls on the developer community to regain their trust. He said that the over-dependence on centralized crypto institutions has led many investors to lose their savings, as is the current situation with the collapse of FTX.
The CEO has decided to focus on moving away from third parties who have created this uncertainty and confusion in the crypto space. He also presented his views on the collapsed exchange and said it had triggered industry-wide chaos, given the bankruptcy and collapse of various firms.
Telegram has been vocal about its aim of not just bringing profits to the company but to serve the larger good. It offers users a freemium, cross-platform, encrypted messaging service as a messenger application. It also provides optional end-to-end encrypted chats, popularly known as secret chat and video calling, VoIP, file sharing, and several other features as its ultimate resolution to user privacy and data protection.
Durov’s view was also supported by several industry experts, including Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano, in his interview with a media house.
However, Telegram is not the only platform which feels a decentralized platform is better than the centralized entities. In November, JP Morgan also commented on the market chaos which was a result of the collapse of FTX and said that the chaos was triggered by centralized crypto firms and not by decentralized institutions like Uniswap. It also counted on this to be in favor of the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector in the regulator’s reference.