Messaging app Telegram has reached 950 million active users and aims to surpass the 1 billion mark this year, the company's founder Pavel Durov said on his channel on Monday.
The company plans to launch an app store and an in-app browser with support for Web3 pages later this month, Durov said last week.
In March, Telegram surpassed 900 million users, and in an interview with the Financial Times at the time, Durov said the company aimed to become profitable next year.
Telegram appears to be accelerating the adoption of Web3 technologies on its platform. The company has supported cryptocurrency and blockchain initiatives for years, but its efforts to enter the space have slowed since its failed initial coin offering in 2018. In December 2022, the company launched an auction for usernames on the TON blockchain.
Since then, the company has focused on helping developers create mini-apps and games that use cryptocurrency for transactions. This year, the company began sharing advertising revenue with channel owners by distributing TONCoins (the token on the TON blockchain). Earlier this month, Telegram began allowing channel owners to convert their stars into TONCoins to buy ads at a discount or to trade cryptocurrency.
But Telegram has long been plagued by scams and fraud. Kaspersky Lab reported that since November 2023, scammers have been actively peddling various schemes to steal Toncoin from users. Durov touched on the issue in a message last week, saying the company is working to mitigate such scams.
“Soon, Telegram will start displaying the month of registration and primary country of public accounts (similar to Instagram). We will also allow organizations to issue labels for their channels using mini-apps, creating a decentralized marketplace for third-party verification,” he wrote in a message on the channel.