Telegram’s userbase climbs to 950M, plans to launch app store | TechCrunch

Messaging app Telegram has reached 950 million active users, and it aims to cross the 1 billion mark this year, the company’s founder Pavel Durov said on his channel on Monday.

The company is also planning to launch an app store and an in-app browser with support for web3 pages this month, Durov said last week.

In March, Telegram crossed 900 million users. At that time, in an interview with the Financial Times, Durov said that the company aims to be profitable next year.

Telegram seems to be accelerating adoption of web3 tech on its platform. The company has long supported cryptocurrency and blockchain initiatives, but its own efforts to enter the space slowed down after its initial coin offering failed in 2018. In December 2022, the company started auctioning usernames on the TON blockchain.

The company has since then focused on helping developers build mini-apps and games that use cryptocurrency for transactions. This year, it started sharing ad revenue with channel owners by handing out toncoin (a token on the TON blockchain). Earlier this month, Telegram started letting channel owners convert stars to toncoin to buy ads at discounted rates or trade cryptocurrencies.

However, Telegram has long suffered from scams and grifts. Since November 2023, scammers have been actively peddling different schemes to steal toncoins from users, as per a report from Kaspersky. Durov addressed this issue in a message last week, saying that the company is working to mitigate such scams.

“Soon, Telegram will begin displaying the month of registration and principal country for public accounts (similar to Instagram). We will also allow organizations to use their mini apps to issue labels for channels, creating a decentralized marketplace for third-party verification,” he wrote in a message on his channel.