📒 Telegram Wallet might go completely unnoticed

⚫️ Back in late July, we already worried that Telegram Wallet could simply get lost inside the app after launch. A billion users may get access to a new wallet, but it was never clear how that billion was actually supposed to find out about it. Now we have the first answer — and it does not make us any more optimistic.

⚫️ Judging by Telegram’s beta version, the new wallet will replace the current @wallet entry in Settings and will also be available through the attachment menu. In other words, for an average user, the update may look something like this: yesterday there was one wallet button in the menu, today there is another. If you do not actively look for it, the “biggest self-custodial wallet rollout in history” could be almost impossible to notice.

⚫️ And that is exactly the problem we wrote about before. Telegram Wallet itself could be a perfectly good product, but simply integrating it into Telegram is not enough. Regular users still need to actually see it, understand why they might want it, and have a reason to open it for the first time.

⚫️ Meanwhile, Pavel Durov himself has now joined the testing: he sent GRAM to an address using the new Telegram Wallet contract. As for the reports currently making the rounds in the media about his appearance at TOKEN2049 Singapore, those are unfortunately still unconfirmed — Durov is not listed among the official speakers.

👁 A shame, really. TOKEN2049 would have been a perfect place for Durov to properly introduce the wallet to a wider audience.

@thedailyton