A crypto messaging app called Status, which was born during the initial coin offering (ICO) boom but had been largely forgotten, has now emerged as one of the most actively developed projects in the crypto ecosystem. According to crypto intelligence platform Santiment, Status is currently the third-most actively developed project in the past thirty days. It has seen over 434 GitHub commits, just ten less than Cardano (ADA) and 17 less than the most actively developed project, Chainlink (LINK).
Status is positioning itself as a competitor to Discord and Telegram, offering community-oriented features and claiming to allow users to send crypto to each other through its platform. Unlike other encrypted messaging apps that require phone numbers for sign-up, Status allows users to sign up using crypto wallet addresses.
However, Status has had a long journey since its launch during the ICO boom in July 2017. It raised $100 million for its native SNT token within 24 hours but faced criticism for the slow development of its product. In April 2020, the project’s CEO and chief communications officer were named as defendants in a class-action lawsuit, accusing the sale of the SNT token as an unregistered securities offering.
Despite these challenges, Status has recently announced the upcoming launch of alpha and beta versions of its app. In a blog post, the project addressed previous concerns and admitted that its initial vision of creating a consumer-facing super app had been too optimistic. Development setbacks, including scalability challenges and the 2018 crypto market crash, had slowed progress. However, the resurgence of development activity and the rise in crypto prices since late 2022 have allowed the project to regain its momentum.
The native SNT token of the Status project is currently priced at $0.04, experiencing a 2.4% increase in the last 24 hours and roughly a 50% increase over the past year. However, it is still down 93.4% from its all-time high of $0.68, which was reached on January 3, 2018, according to CoinGecko data.