Pavel Durov (CEO Telegram) on Technology and Freedom - Keynote @ TOKEN2049

it's good to be here at the main blockchain event of this year we are telegram love blockchain the reason we love blockchain it's a technology of the freedom we care about Freedom even our logo the paper airplane symbolizes freedom to move in three dimensions freedom to communicate privately freedom to express yourselves publicly freedom to promote your crypto scams well it's not included unfortunately I hope there are not many crypto scam projects present here today if there are any please raise your hands okay we have some well at least you're honest you have integrity they say there's no Integrity in the crypto Community that's a proof to otherwise but we strongly believe in giving people freedom to build their own tools their own apps their own businesses on Telegram in fact we allow more freedom to third party developers than any other m major communication app and we integrated blockchain technology into telegr at such a deep level I think we're unique among all big social media platforms here and we are going to talk about this today what has already been achieved and what will our next steps be so why do we love blockchain we love blockchain because it allows us to to give the power back to people and to enrich our ecosystem how large is this ecosystem though out of 900 million monthly active users 300 UH 60 million interact with mini apps every month we can easily double this number if we start suggesting mini apps and chat Bots to our audience we haven't started doing that yet but this is coming later this year so hopefully the number will increase to over 700 million users that will interact with mini apps and chatbots every month now telegram is the sixth largest mobile app in the world it's the sixth most used and the sixth most downloaded but we're different from the rest of these apps we're different from the other top five you see other apps they sell user data personal data to advertisers without sharing any AD proceeds with either users or content creators more than that they will prevent content creators from displaying their own promotional posts because they will enforce their algorithmic feeds to reduce visibility of search posts if you try to do it long enough they will Shadow ban you well telegram does none of that first we don't use your personal data to Target ads we don't sell your personal data to advertisers all our ads are context based second we would uh never prevent the direct link between a content creator a community leader and app and the user will not clutter it with algorithms and third we believe in Sharing telegram is different because we understand that all our success all our popularity is because of you it's because of manyi app developers Community leaders it's because of content creators sticker artists users who to invite their friends to Telegram and that's why we believe in giving back to the community we believe that our users are equal to us and that's why last month we started one of the most generous Revenue sharing models in the history of social media 50% of all the proceeds that we receive from displaying ads in Broad channels goes to the owners of such channels and it's really really easy the first withdrawals will happen already today a lot of people already made some money from this Revenue sharing program and it's just a start you know all this uh transactions the payments for ads withdrawals of ads are powered by blockchain we use exclusively the ton blockchain for that and I'll explain later what is the rationale behind that but it's a new age in the history of social media because and also in the history of blockchain because you have this huge Market several million several hundred million dollar market currently potentially tens of billions dollar ad Market that was put on the rails of blockchain this is quite unprecedented and we don't want to stop there we want to offer Community uh many to many communities as well to benefit from this Revenue sharing model if they want to monetize their large public group chats they will be able to do that completely optional and also receive half of the proceeds but this is not enough there'll be a next stage in the next few weeks we are going to introduce the revenue sharing model for tips to creators and tips to creators huge Market multi-billion dollar market here it's a little bit different when it comes to payments because we are limited with uh in a purchase mechanisms enforced To Us by Apple and Google however the withdrawal mechanism will also be based on blockchain and guess which blockchain will that [Applause] be well we think that we should give more power to content creators and this is a step in that direction but what about merchants since several years ago we've been allowing app developers and Merchants on our platform to sell physical goods and services free of charge more than that we have integrated with 40 payment providers such as stripe to make it super easy for our users to buy goods from app apps mini apps at Bots next stage will be of course to make it available also to users who don't have coding experience simple Merchants who want to quickly set up the store they will be able to do that without any coding skills they will be able to accept payments this is our plan but more importantly in a few weeks we are also going to allow users to buy digital goods and services from App developers and here again we are a bit limited with the in a purchase mechanisms but with the withdrawals will happen on blockchain it will be very easy to use and this Revenue sharing model again is one of the most generous Revenue sharing models in history and we think that this is the right way with think the previous Concepts when a social networking platform operated almost like a digital slavery should be over this may not make much sense in terms of commercial interest of telegram but we think it makes a lot of sense in terms of the moral aspect of this entire operation but our interaction and our integration of blockchain is not limited to just settling transactions using a blockchain platform no we have been the first social media platform to tokenize our entire username space this has been a big success this Market reached 350 Million worth of USD in sales imagine for the first time in the history of social media you can directly own your username you can sell it you can put it up for auction you can buy multiple usernames attach it to your account and this has never happened before because now people got the power over their names a few weeks ago I was asked asked by a very famous friend of mine uh to secure a nice telegram username for him and I really tried it actually wasn't occupied but I had to start an auction on the fragment platform to get this username and guess what I failed to win in the auction the smart contract that governs this process doesn't care whether it's the CEO and owner of telegram trying to snitch a nice username it's fair to everybody everyone is equal in this ecosystem more than that we were the first major social networking platform to allow users to sign up and log in using their blockchain accounts using their blockchain wallet and the way it works is that we introduced these Anonymous numbers many of you are familiar with those those are again nfts based on the tone blockchain similar to usernames but this nfts have utility they're different from you know all this uh monkey nfts and um with Anonymous numbers we experienced something we didn't expect the price increase for these numbers was 33 times a lot of people made a lot of money by buying and reselling those numbers it was extraordinary but again we don't want to stay there want to go further you see we believe in socially relevant nfts we believe in nfts that are deeply integrated into human culture into human interaction into our communication nfts that you can see tens of billions of time and they have a lot of potential in uh spreading virally these are the right nfts that's why the next step that we are going to undertake is tokenizing telegram stickers [Applause] well you probably recognize this duck that is smoking weed over there actually this duck was created by one of the sticker artists we work with it's perhaps one of the most talented sticker artists in the world so he created it a few years ago and since then it became viral became a cultural phenomenon became a meme even outside of telegram this sticker got hundreds of millions of views at least and imagine if somebody owned this sticker as an nft when it just came out a few years ago I think the price increase would challenge what we've experienced with uh Anonymous numbers again stickers are very very popular more than 700 billion times stickers are shared each month on telegram the number of views of stickers is incredible then we believe that emoji can become an ft as well you know they're almost like stickers but you can include numerous Emoji in one message and why not after this maybe sticker sets and Emoji sets can become their own meme coins also possible but you know for all of this to make this happen we are going to rely on the T blockchain the open network well it not because it has a blue logo and it's reminiscent of a paper airplane but because it's so scalable at our scale we need something that can process tens of millions potentially hundreds of millions of transactions the open network reached a record in processing uh is the number of transactions they processed uh per minute last year it so obviously they're the best and uh also you know these guys they're quite fast with the team and the transactions now they also have low commission and I know many of you present here don't like commissions specifically the Securities and exchanges commissions [Applause] and we can relate to that and uh you know there is a lot of exciting stuff going on in the tone ecosystem and we have some very interesting announcements that we're going to share with you today and to update you on the current stay and state of the tone ecosystem I will invite the representative of this ecosystem my good friend [Applause] [Music] Andrew the floor is yours thank thank you hey everyone so glad to be here today um so my name is Andrew I'm the CEO found and founder of the open platform we are major builder in the uh ton blockchain ecosystem and uh today I want to tell you more about how we integrate uh blockchain products right into telegram so uh if you if you're already familiar with Tonica system you might have heard about the products that we built and one of the products of course the major one is the wallet that we integrate into telegram it's basically the ultimate solution to get access to provide like hundreds of millions users to get access to crypto and of course like it's it's a gateway to to the entire Tona system and besides that we also bu build uh very essential Primitives in in the entire Electronica system which is of course like self- custody wallet uh nft Marketplace deck and liquid staking protocol and also we built the platform the solution for Content creators and game developers to monetize them in Telegram and also get access to uh to to engage with their audience so we built this with one simple mission to put krypta in everyone's Pockets so and how we achieve that so the answer is mini apps and telegram so it's a comprehensive solution for Builders to build applications inside telegram so it's it actually very convenient to launch an application like inside telegram you don't have to as a user you don't have to go outside of the messenger you can instantly launch it no downloads no uh additional sign up or everything like that so it's also for Builders it's like a crossplatform uh you know solution so that you can actually launch your application uh on one platform just one single application and it will be available through throughout all of the platforms like mobile and desktop through telegram so and also it has advanced notifications so like if you buil for example a decentralized app in the form of website you can't send notifications efficiently and with telegram messenger you can send it easily and they might be very very very advanced in terms of of the functionality and of course the last but not the least is viral mechanics something that you cannot have if you built an app like outside of the social platform so just to give you a little bit sense of you know how this thing works so the wallet itself that we built it is an mini application so it's not like it's not a native part of the app but it looks very natively so it provides very easy access to crypto for like users can easily get on board it uh and thanks to the partnership between ton foundation and telegram we've been able to uh promote this we're able to promote this wallet uh throughout the entire you know uh telegram Audience by integrating the entry points uh both in the menu and also like in the attachments um menu within the charts so it makes it very easy to to start using crypto so the next thing is the self custody wallet which is also part of this solution which allows users to have like a block public blockchain profile associated with a uh telegram profile so that basically you can provide the um uh entire audience like a simple access to to digital assets like you know tokens or Collectibles and more importantly Builders can you know connect with the wallets and not don't even worry about how users will you know onboard the wallet there's no friction which is great in just you know uh several weeks we've been able by integration with one of the manyi applications inside of the ecosystem to on board 5 million users in the self- custody wallet easily but it's not enough if you have a wallet you need to have a applications you need to have killer use cases and we experimented with NCoin so uh I believe some of you might have heard about this phenomenon and actually it is phenomenon so uh that was actually something that you know we've been dreaming about to find a way how we can actually convert the vision into reality by just you know not only building this application but the idea was to educate Builders all over the globe just to realize the potential which lies you know in in telegram ecosystem so and it became a killer app so so in just one month we've been able to get to reach 20 million users and in 3 months we achieved uh 35 million users 94% of these users were invited by others so it just shows how efficiently you can use viral mechanics and Telegram and Peak daily active audience reached 6.5 million users in March and all the social media media uh combined we reached like almost 8 million users this it became like the largest crypto Community especially like the largest this the fastest growing crypto community in the entire world so what are the drivers of success first of all once again easy launch you can simply click a button and start using the app reality is very important just to give you a sense like the um the largest influencer actually streamer on Twitch was able to invite 170,000 people to this application can you imagine so and of course like competition is very important so it's a social platform people have to compete with each other I mean they like to this competition not only like participating in the leaderboards but also the squads which is a great mechanic that allowed you I mean people to unite in the communities and compete with each other so all of these things they actually allowed this application to become such successful use case and we see that market started adopting this proving mechanics each of this application that you you see on the screen they all gains you know millions of users in just a matter of couple weeks so it means that it works so it reminds me you know 2009 when Facebook launched the social gaming platform and uh it just you know enabled so many developers to become successful in a completely new sort of market so the whole new market emerged so and we are in the beginning of New Era of application development inside telegram we truly believe that um the combination of telegram mini apps and um uh tone based wallets inside telegram it just works and we proved that already so we are very grateful for we are very grateful to pav and his amazing team for such an incredible platform that we can use on daily basis and we can build also grateful for to all the developers who are contributing in achieving our common mission of putting crypto in everyone's pockets and uh you know Tona system is thriving we're welcoming everyone to build and but there is one more thing one more component lacking in the entire Tonica system and Telegram and to tell you more about this I want to invite poo the CEO of tether on stage thank you [Applause] you all right thank you you thank you for being here how many of you know about tedar and usdt that's good so how many of you know what is our current market cap well the slide is a little bit um outdated because you know was provided two days ago the organizers of the conference asked me to not be the classic Italian to be in time provide the the slides in time and actually today is 109 billion um dollars in market cap so we are humbled it's um I always say that we came up with a really simple idea that was putting the most used currency in the world on top of the best Innovation that Tech and finance came in the last uh 30 years that is blockchain so everything else is all of you all the word that wanted to have a more open free transparent Fair Financial system these 109 billion dollars are representing that are representing an optionality that goes out from what Humanity had before in the last decades is giving new chances to people that have been been left behind by the financial system so I just want to talk about something that is really important right um for for tedar is how we can keep it safe what is the safety of tar right is a question that many ask and rightfully ask because we want to make sure that we are going to be held as tar accountable with the highest standards to make our product as safe as possible to go much more beyond what Finance have did so far we have seen in the last few years how many banks failed and I believe that many more banks will fail in the future so how we can prevent to that that to happen to the product that we have been building for the last 10 years this year in 2024 we're celebrating our 10th year anniversary with tedar so so last year was a great year um $6.2 billion in profits um of which the vast majority has remained in the reserves of usdt so not only now usdt is 100% backed by liquid reserves but on top of that we decided with those $6 billion $6.2 billion we decided to keep the vast majority of them within the reserves of the stable coin we could have distributed them to our shareholders but that would have been pointless we are simple people we started with a simple idea the idea we are bitcoiners at heart we believe in Financial Freedom we believe in the importance of teaching a lesson to the old guard of the financial world that is always always managing to screw it up so today tedar is 106% back because of that because we are keeping an acccess equity we will continue to do so we believe that in in the protection of our ecosystem we are we are with tedar one of the biggest holders of us de so we we crossed 90 billion dollar of US debt held by tedar Treasury and think about it right if tar was a country we would be the 20th among the 20th biggest countries owning US debt we also if you think about it China I think two three years ago had around $3 trillion in US debt and today has around $700 billion means that China started selling a lot of us depth today tedar has around 12 13% in size compared to what China has how crazy is that a small company with a small idea like tedar grows so fast and become one of the biggest holders of us treasury bills I think that shows how technology unified by good ethics by the willingness of really changing the Status Quo can achieve the incredible so why tetar is also growing so much compared to the competition so I think I always try to create images in the people people's mind right to me when people ask me oh why why this uh success and why not is not happening to to other St coins in this moment is because I believe in creating products that have a clear product Market fit anything if you even create a spoon you need to understand who is going to use that spoon we created usdt starting from an an actual need of the cryptocurrency ecosystem that was making cryptocurrency Arbitrage much e more efficient now over the years the value proposition of tedar completely changed tedar today is been used by more than 300 million people around the world so why is that why why why this so wide audience for a dollar why no one or why people need that dollar don't they have already a dollar in their pocket don't have they already a bank account that they can use or debit cards and credit cards well the reality is that there are three billion people around the world that are unbanked there are not bad people right not having a bank account doesn't mean that you are a bad person you are a great person the problem is that you are too poor to be of interest of the traditional banking system you are if you earn 10000 $300 per month you don't have a Bigg saving account so Banks cannot squeeze money out of you so they will not Bank you so that is quite sad to see is uh is something that hopefully our industry the cryptocurrency industry started to step in and create option alties allow people to keep their own wealth in their own on their own smartphones so keep be in control of your own wealth is one of the biggest achievements that Humanity made in the last 10 years 10 15 years and on top of that there are five billion people that are living in countries that have that are subject to really high inflation think about Argentina think about turkey and so on and so forth so this combination made usdt the most used product in when it comes to digital dollar so you can see here some of U different uh newspaper headlines Argentina Brazil Nigeria and um and turkey Lebanon so it's um it's clear it's not tar is not 109 billion dollar market cap today because we are smarter we are beautiful and so on we actually tar never had a marketing team before 2022 no one in the marketing team the product was just useful people found it easy people needed at we were there at the moment in time where people needed us the most when National Curr currencies were crashing where infl when inflation was Raising that's what we stand for with tedar but then what's next right I'm sure that many of you are surprised on what I'm going to announce now but uh how we can go from our current US user base to a much bigger user base and create with a partner with a new partner Telegram and ton a new bigger ecosystem that empowers people that gives them the freedom that they deserve because freedom is a human right how we can grow that part of community that shares our philosophy our mindset and wants to have Liberty of communications pav talked about the importance of freedom of speech the ability to express yourself on Telegram and we for the people that know tar that is one of our root more most important principles as well so we are announcing the launch of usdt on ton we truly believe that look there are so many blockchains that are asking us to integrate uh usdt on their chain but one of the really rare things that you can find is the ecosystem that telegram built with the principles that telegram built telegram has a small headcount um P was talking about you know around 60 people that is pretty much the head account that also tar has right with good teams with small teams you can achieve immense things and especially when we com you combine this expertise together when you start combining ecosystems you create the Holy Grail of um you you create the end Holy Grail so everyone in um from social media from all the different communication platforms they are trying to monetize their user base but I think the way they're trying to do it is completely rooted in let's use Fiat let's send around checks or let's you know use the banking system that is not scalable that is not scalable to empower users to create loyalty into the users to make users par participate to the growth of the ecosystem you need something that is quick you need something that you need money that is programmable that is what usdt on ton will enable so the integration of us on ton is already live so today we launch the integration we did already the first issuance so you can expect the integration or be already live in the telegram wallet this is the type of U collaborations that I think good companies in our industry should be doing because when I think about the missing parts of the cryptocurrency industry is exactly the user experience today we are almost living in our own bubble where we think that everyone in the world should understand all our Budz words and all the complexity of the things that we are doing actually most of the people in this world have other things to do they have their own life they don't have all the time to spend in understanding our complex user experience with uh with many dog coins and stuff like that so the most important thing is to create a wallet within an application that they already trust with the most trusted stable coin with a form of money that they understand the US dollar to make their life easier to empower them to make choice of or have an optionality to to drop from the traditional Financial system and use something that is resilient it was proven to be resilient over the last 10 years we have seen again many banks fa failing so this is I think the one of the most exciting things that uh we could do at tar and I'm thankful for to pav and uh Andrew for for the trust that they have put on tar [Applause] and you can see some beautiful screenshots on how this all will work thank you thank you [Applause] [Music] ladies and gentlemen Pavo durab Paulo Ando and Andrew big announcement right here on the M2 main stage at token 2049 that is why you are here and the big names are going to keep coming we are preparing for the karate combat panel right now karate combat has exploded