🇺🇦Interestingly, most people voted for Ukrainian to be the subject of my new post. So here you go — below is everything you wanted to know about the relationship of the Telegram CEO with the Ukrainian language (but were afraid to ask 🤫).

As my mom’s family comes from Ukraine, I was curious about this language since my teenage years. As a linguist by education, I was also fascinated by the differences and similarities between Ukrainian and Russian.

That’s why in 2008, Ukrainian was the first language we translated the interface of VK (my previous large project) into. Back then, most of the websites popular in Ukraine were still in Russian, but I wanted to give our millions of users from Ukraine the freedom to customize their experience. To do this, I had to rewrite most of VK’s code, replacing hardcoded Russian phrases with variables that we then translated into Ukrainian with the help of volunteers.

We were happy with the result: this launch announcement, which is recorded in the Web Archive, will make many people feel nostalgic — https://web.archive.org/web/20120104053631/http://vkontakte.ru/blog?id=70 🥲

For the next few months, I was exclusively using the Ukrainian version of VK to make sure I hadn’t missed any Russian words still hardcoded in VK’s code. I inevitably learnt some Ukrainian as a result. I also wanted VK to be the first popular website in Ukraine to introduce correct case endings for names in Ukrainian (in English, “Paul” in “Photos with Paul” and “About Paul” doesn’t change, but in Slavic languages like Ukrainian “Paul” in these phrases should have different endings depending on the case). As the one who was implementing the support for this part of Ukrainian grammar in VK’s code, I was able to learn its rules in the process.

Soon after we launched the Ukrainian version of VK in 2008, I went to Kyiv to celebrate. I was fascinated by how some words sounded in Ukrainian and would take photos with random notices in the background. People in Kyiv were very welcoming, so over the years I would come back to make new friends who would then teach me new words and fun expressions.

To keep practicing after 2022, I started completing Ukrainian lessons in the DuoLingo app. Using my DurovLingo account there, I scored 5403 experience points in Ukrainian. Currently, when browsing Telegram channels, I understand about 95% of written and 85% of spoken Ukrainian. Sometimes I have to ask one of the Telegram engineers from Ukraine to educate me on the nuances of meaning.

Overall, learning Ukrainian helped me better understand other Slavic languages: for example, my comprehension of Polish and Czech increased noticeably as a side effect. Most importantly, being able to read Ukrainian without translation allows me to make sure Telegram’s moderation processes are fair to all sides and inaccurate translation doesn’t influence any decisions in difficult cases that get escalated to the CEO level.

While Ukraine accounts for less than 3% of Telegram’s global audience, more than 70% of Ukrainians use Telegram for messaging and news, and we’re seeing more and more content in Ukrainian being published.

I hope that knowing Ukrainian — and foreign languages in general — makes me more competent as a leader of a neutral platform where rules are applied equally to all sides. We strive to be a place where everyone is treated fairly regardless of their origin and where ideas can compete freely regardless of their language 🕊

✨✨ Being mindful about what kind of information we consume is just as important for our wellbeing as what food we eat. Words may shape our reality in more ways than we think.

That’s why I never watch horror movies and instead prefer films showing uplifting success stories (“Wonka” was my favorite last year). Popular songs, replayed many times, can work like magical spells that plant suggestions in our brains, so I carefully select my playlist to make sure their lyrics don’t include undesirable scenarios. I like to start my day with mid-20th century songs that express joy, such as “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” or “What a Wonderful World” 💫🦄

Telegram, unlike other apps, doesn’t throw random content at its users — people receive only the news from channels they have joined, and they can unsubscribe any time. This architecture helps us remain an independent platform that doesn’t promote any narrative and instead gives people the full power to choose what they like to see in their feed ✊💪

🤫 A story shared by Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, uncovered that the current leaders of Signal, an allegedly “secure” messaging app, are activists used by the US state department for regime change abroad 🥷

🥸 The US government spent $3M to build Signal’s encryption, and today the exact same encryption is implemented in WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google Messages and even Skype. It looks almost as if big tech in the US is not allowed to build its own encryption protocols that would be independent of government interference 🐕‍🦺

🕵️‍♂️ An alarming number of important people I’ve spoken to remarked that their “private” Signal messages had been exploited against them in US courts or media. But whenever somebody raises doubt about their encryption, Signal’s typical response is “we are open source so anyone can verify that everything is all right”. That, however, is a trick 🤡

🕵️‍♂️ Unlike Telegram, Signal doesn’t allow researchers to make sure that their GitHub code is the same code that is used in the Signal app run on users’ iPhones. Signal refused to add reproducible builds for iOS, closing a GitHub request from the community. And WhatsApp doesn’t even publish the code of its apps, so all their talk about “privacy” is an even more obvious circus trick 💤

🛡 Telegram is the only massively popular messaging service that allows everyone to make sure that all of its apps indeed use the same open source code that is published on Github. For the past ten years, Telegram Secret Chats have remained the only popular method of communication that is verifiably private 💪

💎 Notcoin, a miniapp on Telegram, reached 35M active users in just a few months.

🐸 In this app, users could earn a game currency “notcoins” by clicking on the screen. Yesterday, the cryptocurrency Notcoin was minted on the TON blockchain and listed on all major cryptoexchanges. All of a sudden, Notcoin users who just played this game for fun could convert their in-game currency into real money 🤑

🚀 Notcoin instantly became a top-10 cryptocurrency in the world by trading volume, and reached almost $700 million in market capitalization. Imagine — hundreds of millions of dollars in value were created for Telegram users in this miniapp out of nowhere in a matter of months 😲

💪 This amazing success story shows how powerful the Telegram / TON ecosystems are for app developers. Telegram offers app developers more freedom than any other platform, providing unmatched opportunities to leverage social interactions for viral distribution. TON, in turn, provides scale and flexibility for any blockchain project on top of it 💎

We are now seeing a large wave of new miniapps being built on Telegram and TON. Notcoin, the leader of the pack, used its mighty paws to pave the way for many apps to come 🐺

🪙 Half a million Notcoin users gifted me $6.8 million worth of Notcoin!

Thank you ☺️

📈 I will hold these coins until they turn to $680M, at which point I will use them to buy more servers for Telegram 🏭

😆 #WealthGapWidens #RichGetRicher #DisparityGrows #SubsidizeTheRich #TaxThePoor (later this month, tapping on such hashtags will show all public channel posts containing them).

🆕 Last week brought us another big Telegram update that includes message effects, captions above photos, hashtag search, collapsible quotes, actions for phone numbers in messages and more.

💖 My favorite new addition is Message Effects — a feature you voted for in this channel. Press and hold on the “Send” button after typing a message to choose a colorful message effect. We added over 500 ❗️ message effects that you can attach to any message you send in 1-on-1 chats.

👉 Something even bigger is set to launch this week, so stay tuned!

💎 The $6 million worth of Notcoin donated to me 2 weeks ago has increased in price 4 times and is now valued at $24 million 📈

🚀 The daily trading volume of Notcoin reached $4 billion yesterday, making it one of the top 5 most-traded cryptocurrencies in the world 🏅

🪙 Millions of people earned money on Notcoin just by using a mini app in Telegram — and now they keep earning more. While the Notcoin mini app is accessed via Telegram, the Notcoin cryptocurrency is minted on TON 💎 — the only blockchain technology that is truly scalable and can support a new wave of super popular projects 🔋

💪 A month ago, Notcoin was the largest cryptocurrency community in the history of social media. Today, the Notcoin community is rivaled only by projects it inspired — similar mini apps on Telegram that are allowing tens of millions of users to benefit 🫰

🫡 We are proud to be the platform that serves the people.

Big day today, we’re launching Telegram Stars ⭐️ – a way to pay for digital services in mini apps.

Unlike old-school apps, Telegram mini apps like Notcoin don’t need to be installed for use. That’s why they grow so quickly. In addition, Telegram’s social nature allows mini apps to spread virally, so they reach tens of millions of users within weeks ⚡️

⭐️ With Telegram Stars, mini apps can now accept payments for digital services using the simplest payment method possible – in-app purchases on Android and iOS 💳

Mini app developers can withdraw their Stars via Fragment using TON. They can also use Stars to further promote their apps on Telegram — on preferential terms! 👛

Apple and Google take a 30% commission when users buy Stars from them, but Telegram will subsidize ads purchased with Telegram Stars. So if developers reinvest Stars in promoting their app, the overall commission will be nearly 0%! As a result, launching apps on Telegram makes more economic sense than launching traditional mobile apps 📈

The recent mini app boom has already made Telegram the main destination to launch new apps. Stars and ad subsidies bring this to a new level – unprecedented in the history of social media 😏

🧠 Last week, Microsoft introduced its Copilot AI bot on Telegram.

😌 I am not surprised to see big tech launching their apps on Telegram. Telegram is the only platform that is friendly to all AI developers and doesn’t impose its own competing chatbots on users.

⭐️ The new Stars payments, where Telegram takes almost no commission (less than 5%) and subsidizes ads, are not only lucrative for developers but also compliant with Apple’s and Google’s rules. That’s why we will recommend bots and mini apps that accept Stars in relevant parts of the Telegram apps.

📬 For example, we will start showing an AI section of our upcoming “Mini App Store” to businesses that are adding bots to process customer feedback. Or suggest bots that help create stickers to the users who try our Sticker Maker ⭐️

And so on. The possibilities are endless ⭐️

💔 My phone got “unlocked” by the Dubai heat 🫠

👴 I’ve been using this $180 Samsung as my primary device for the last two years. I chose it because it’s one of the most widely used phones among Telegram users. I wanted to understand their experience to serve them better 🫡

But it seems I’ll have to change my phone soon 😂

🥲 It’s getting warmer in Dubai, and my friends are leaving for fancy places like the south of France. As a French citizen, I agree that France is the best holiday destination 🇫🇷

📱 As the Telegram CEO though, I don’t take holidays. Instead, I keep working while meeting our users from unusual locations. This summer I’ve decided to check out Central Asia to see what life is like there, study how people use Telegram and what their digital needs are 📞

☕️ I will keep you posted in this channel about my discoveries 🕵️‍♂️