🍷 The recent Telegram update revolutionizes how people interact with mini apps. Now people can collapse apps and switch between them. In the future, this new bottom bar will also store web pages and other content for later reading.

💫 This update also introduces the ability for channel owners to publish paid photos and videos, which users can buy with Stars. Like mini app developers, channel owners can convert the Stars they collect into Toncoin, with virtually no commission from Telegram.

#️⃣ The newest version of Telegram also includes other features like hashtag and location search for public Stories. Check out the full announcement for more details!

🤑 The duck picture for the latest Telegram update is so good I printed out its full version to hang in my office 🍀

🐹 Hamster Kombat has become the latest Internet phenomenon everyone's talking about. 239 million people have signed up for this Telegram mini app in just 3 months 🔥

📈 It took Hamster only 73 days to reach 100 million monthly users. Each day, 4-5 million new users join Hamster Kombat, making it the fastest-growing digital service in the world 🔝

🍆 As I said a few months back, a new wave of mini apps on Telegram is coming, and Hamster Kombat is now leading the pack. Its amazing growth shows the viral potential of the Telegram mini app platform 🦠

🍸 Soon, Hamster’s team will mint its token on TON, introducing the benefits of blockchain to hundreds of millions of people. A new era is coming, and we are witnessing its arrival in real time 🖼

⚡️ 2024 will go down in history as the year when hundreds of millions of people became familiar with blockchain. We’re proud that Telegram is at the epicenter of this societal transformation 🤵

🔥To keep the fire going, this month, we will introduce a mini app store and an in-app browser with support for Web3-pages 😮

❗️ We will also step up our efforts to fight the scammers seeking to defraud new entrants into the crypto realm. 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 ✔️

😏 Thanks to more transparency and decentralization, Telegram users will know more about the opportunities and the dangers of this new world 💪

👑9️⃣5️⃣0️⃣👑 Telegram reached 950 million monthly active users — up from 900 million in the spring. On track for ONE BILLION! 🎆

🐱 Despite the fact that I am clearly a dog person, Telegram hosts the largest cat-lover community in the world — Catizen 😼

🐱 Catizen is a mini game on Telegram with over 26 million players. The game has already earned $16 million (!) from in-app purchases and donated 1% of it to rescue stray cats 😱

😄 Catizen introduced millions of people to blockchain, because it uses TON-based smart contracts for its in-game rewards. Their team also built tools for other developers to easily launch their games on Telegram and TON 🤑

👏 Well done, Catizen team — now I’m waiting for you to develop a “Dogizen”! 🐶

🤯 I was just told that I have over 100 biological kids. How is this possible for a guy who has never been married and prefers to live alone? 🤨

🔙 Fifteen years ago, a friend of mine approached me with a weird request. He said that he and his wife couldn’t have kids due to a fertility issue and asked me to donate sperm at a clinic for them to have a baby. I laughed my ass off before realizing he was dead serious 😑

👨‍⚕️ The boss of the clinic told me that “high quality donor material” was in short supply and that it was my civic duty to donate more sperm to anonymously help more couples. This sounded crazy enough to get me to sign up for sperm donation 🚬

🤰Fast forward to 2024, my past donating activity has helped over a hundred couples in 12 countries to have kids. Moreover, many years after I stopped being a donor, at least one IVF clinic still has my frozen sperm available for anonymous use by families who want to have kids 👧

🧬 Now I plan to open-source my DNA so that my biological children can find each other more easily. Of course, there are risks, but I don’t regret having been a donor. The shortage of healthy sperm has become an increasingly serious issue worldwide, and I’m proud that I did my part to help alleviate it 💪

🚀 I also want to help destigmatize the whole notion of sperm donation and incentivize more healthy men to do it, so that families struggling to have kids can enjoy more options. Defy convention — redefine the norm! ✊

🚩 Big day! Today we introduce the Telegram Browser and Mini App Store, plus many other innovations ✨🍬

🖥 The Browser lets users switch between viewing websites and messaging, merging communication with news consumption. It is equipped with all the features you would expect from a browser — like search, bookmarks, and multiple tabs 🤩

💎 Most importantly, Telegram Browser allows people to view decentralized websites called TON Sites. This opens the world of blockchain-based web (often called Web 3.0) to almost a billion users. To try it out, update Telegram and open a link (like tonsite://getting-started.ton) 🌐

⭐️ Users can now gift Stars to their friends, who will be directed to the Mini App Store for examples of apps that accept Stars. To check out the mini app catalog, go to the 'Apps' tab in Search 🔎

🔝 Speaking of mini apps, they have a whole new way to spread virally across the Telegram ecosystem — via Stories, which also got an upgrade today with covers and smart animated weather widgets ☀️

💪 We’re proud to ship this. Try it all yourself or check out the video demos on the blog. Enjoy your summer holidays — we’ll keep building 👨‍💻

1️⃣1️⃣ When I turned 11 in 1995, I made a promise to myself to become smarter, stronger and freer every day. Today Telegram turns 11 years old, and it’s ready to make the same commitment. Every day, Telegram should become:

✨ 🧠 smarter (more features for the people)
✨ 💪 stronger (more popularity among users)
✨ ✈️ freer (more independent and self-sufficient)

🎂 Happy birthday, Telegram!

P. S. Just 2 weeks after the last major Telegram update, we’re launching new features today — a new type of channels and 3 new ways to support content creators. Enjoy! 🌅