'Neither Privacy nor Business': Top Solana and Zcash Proponent Urges Crypto Industry to Quit Telegram

Helius co-founder and CEO Mert Mumtaz, who has become one of the most vocal advocates of on-chain privacy and a prominent supporter of the Zcash ecosystem, issued a harsh statement against Telegram. The public criticism followed an incident involving well-known Ethereum engineer Dominik Clemente, whose account was completely deleted by the messenger's support team after being compromised by hackers, with no possibility of recovering the data. Mumtaz used the case to urge the crypto community and developers to fundamentally reconsider their relationship with Telegram. In his view, the platform is no longer capable of meeting the basic demands of the Web3 industry and is trapped in a critical deadlock.

What's driving the campaign against Telegram

For developers focused on privacy - a narrative Mumtaz consistently promotes through his support of Zcash - Telegram's lack of default end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in regular chats represents a fundamental vulnerability. According to him, the messenger is completely outclassed by Signal, and for coordinating large-scale blockchain projects and internal team communications, Telegram falls far behind corporate standards established by Slack. Together with the affected dcbuilder.eth, the Helius chief pointed out that effective support and account protection inside the messenger are only truly available to major corporate partners.

— mert (@mert) May 13, 2026 Independent builders facing hacks or phishing attacks are left alone with automated account deletion systems, often losing years of work, contacts, and communication channels. Mumtaz's remarks come amid his growing influence as one of the leading voices connecting Solana scalability with the philosophy of privacy-preserving digital assets. The direct call from a top builder to recognize the messenger as insecure has already triggered a wave of discussion across the crypto community about migrating critical Web3 infrastructure toward Signal and protected decentralized messaging dApps. While Pavel Durov continues promoting the TON ecosystem and positioning Telegram as the primary blockchain messenger, some technology builders across the Solana and Zcash ecosystems are beginning to view the platform as a hidden threat. Judging by the growing public criticism, the messenger may remain a convenient platform for TON marketing and mass adoption, but for real business operations and privacy, critics increasingly see it as unsafe.