Introducing Lunagram — a Cosmos Wallet inside Telegram messenger
Wallets, and blockchain in large, have a chicken and egg problem. You don’t use crypto because others don’t, others don’t use crypto because you don’t. The culture of simply ‘buy and hodl’ has become the norm.
However, we believe that mainstream adoption of decentralized systems and cryptocurrency is not a lost cause. While there are many compelling reasons to just ‘HODL’, the value added by actual usage is crucial for the long term success of this industry.
Hello, Cosmos
Today we are happy to announce the first step in bringing Cosmos ecosystem to the masses: the Lunagram wallet.
Let’s think for a second.
Which mobile application do you spend the most time on?
While answers may vary by person, a messenger will very likely be one of the top 3 applications people use in their daily lives. So we thought, “Why not put a crypto wallet inside an application that people use the most?”
Until now, crypto wallets were something that you tuck away in the back of your app drawer. That is, if you are one of the few people who even have a wallet on your phone.
A wallet that just ‘stores’ cryptocurrency is not a very compelling feature for most people to go out of their way to download and use a crypto wallet. We believe that a wallet can and should do more than just store and send cryptocurrency, and we think that bridging Telegram and Cosmos Network might just be the recipe to success.
Why Telegram?
Users, users, and More Users!
Telegram is a messaging platform with over 200 million active users worldwide. Nearly all blockchain projects have active communities on the Telegram platform.
Getting users to start using a new messenger platform is hard work. Because messengers are used to communicate, having a lot of people using the messenger is crucial. So, rather than taking the approach of building users from the ground up, we are taking a shortcut by simply absorbing existing Telegram users to the Cosmos ecosystem.
When you open up Lunagram for the first time, it’s just like your old Telegram client. Simply sign in with your phone number, and all of your existing conversations, photos, and files will be there. We’ve intentionally designed the application for existing Telegram users to transition with ease.
Supercharged Blockchain Bots
We believe that hundreds of small blockchain applications will have a shot at success overall than one big blockchain project. The combination of ‘Cosmos + Telegram’ provides an open bot platform for developers to create mini blockchain applications with very little effort.
While the Telegram bot platform provides a flexible toolkit to develop bots, it lacks a simple-to-deploy payment mechanism (some payment mechanisms exist, but the fees can be up to 7%). This has stifled innovation as there are no ways for developers to monetize their applications. Some developers have opted to go the manual route by telling users to send funds to a designated Bitcoin address. However, this user experience is less than optimal for both users and developers. This can be easily solved by utilizing Cosmos.
We see Telegram bots as the perfect platform to showcase blockchain use-case and onboard a massive wave of new users. Especially with Ethermint coming up, there is great potential for a simple-yet-effective blockchain applications on the Telegram bot platform.
Keep a close eye on our channels as we showcase exciting new bots that utilize the best of Telegram and Cosmos.
Why Cosmos?
Cosmos is an ecosystem of interoperable application specific blockchains. The Cosmos Hub, the primary hub of the ecosystem, is a blockchain secured by ‘Bonded Proof of Stake(BPoS)’ on top of the Tendermint consensus algorithm (Find out more about Cosmos/Tendermint). It is built using the modular Cosmos-SDK.
Cosmos’ ultimate vision for blockchain is massive interoperability. While blockchains have operated as separate entities so far, Cosmos envisions a blockchain ecosystem that is interconnected just like how the internet is today.
The potential for such a system is beyond anything we’ve seen so far, and the user experience as the ecosystem matures will only get better. Also, all Cosmos Hub transactions are final in 1-confirmations. No more waiting for 6-confirmations for your transactions to be safe.
Currently, there are over 70+ projects building blockchain applications with Cosmos SDK and Tendermint(Binance DEX, Iris Network, Terra, Sentinel to name a few). We hope to utilize all of these blockchain applications.
Ultimately, what Lunagram does is provide a unified and familiar experience for blockchain applications without ever leaving your messenger.
That sounds cool, what else is there?
Send Crypto via Telegram
You can send Atoms (and more tokens to come) to Lunagram users from their profile (Note: The person receiving the Atom must have their Telegram Bio set as a Cosmos address).
Once the transaction goes through, the person receiving the transaction will receive a message with the transaction details.
Stake Atoms and Claim Reward
Lunagram fully supports staking features. You can delegate, undelegate, redelegate your Atoms right within the application. Check up on how your validators are doing, and keep claiming those sweet staking rewards. Think of Lunagram as a virtual miner for the Cosmos ecosystem.
Governance
If you’re a Cosmos Hub delegator, you are entitled to vote on all active proposals. You may even override your validator’s votes if you happen to disagree with their choice.
With the wallet being built into the messenger, you can discuss Cosmos governance with other community members then vote in the same app. At the moment we are working on integrating a voting feature within a group chat with the use of Telegram bots.
Security
All actions that deals with your private key (such as create account, send, stake, sign, vote, etc) is done securely on the device. Only signed transactions (that do not contain sensitive information) are sent to the blockchain to be processed.
Our wallet has been fully audited by security experts so you can rest assured that your Atoms are safe.
Biometric Authentication
A simple and secure way to sign your transactions. Again, your private keys never leave your phone.
What’s Ahead for Lunagram?
Our focus moving forward is Cosmos-bots(cosmobots?), iOS version release, and design updates. We are a small team consistently working on improving our product, and would love to hear your initial feedback. Tell us what works and doesn’t work for you and we’ll try to incorporate your feed back on our next update.
Ultimately our goal is to showcase the full potential of the Cosmos ecosystem through Lunagram by having people use various blockchain applications. For that, we’re happy to partner up and collaborate with other projects/zones building on the Cosmos-SDK.
If you want to know more about what Lunagram has to offer feel free to contact us at support@lunamint.com or tweet us @lunamintvc.
