Aside from the indignation of several billion users of the messenger, today's disruption of WhatsApp definitely caused another group of people to be quite satisfied. The cryptocurrency Toncoin (TON), affiliated with Telegram, grew by almost 10% during the failure of its direct messaging competitor.
Having given up some of the growth after a while, TON is still trading at 4%, above its opening price at press time. Funnily enough, the WhatsApp disruption, apart from its indirect impact on TON quotes, also caused a spike in search queries for key word "Telegram."
Telegram and TON ties
TON and Telegram are independent but friendly projects. Telegram withdrew from the development of the blockchain platform TON, which was being funded by the messenger's founder, Pavel Durov, under the terms of a peace agreement with U.S. regulators in May 2020.
The Open Network team has a certain freedom in implementing developments on Telegram. For example, the messenger has already integrated TON's crypto wallet with its P2P market, sold out its NFT TON Punks collection and recently announced an auction for short names on Telegram, similar to Ethereum Name Service domains.
TON blockchain performance
As a Layer 1 blockchain, TON compares itself directly to Solana and Ethereum, if the project's official website is to be believed. So far, however, the number of transactions on the blockchain has reached 85.2 million, with 1.4 million addresses and 232 validators.
Arman Shirinyan
Godfrey Benjamin
Alex Dovbnya