A nearly forgotten crypto communication app born during the first crypto pre-sale (ICO) boom has become one of the most actively developed projects in the crypto ecosystem. According to a March 21 post by blockchain data analysis platform Santiment, the open-source crypto messaging app called Status, which is an Ethereum-based project, is currently the third most actively developed project in the last thirty days.
Status Team Rises from the Ashes
Santiment shared that Status had over 434 GitHub commits in the past month, which is ten less than Cardano and 17 less than the most actively developed project, Chainlink. The yet-to-be-released communication app positions itself as a competitor to Discord and Telegram, highlighting community-focused features and claiming to allow users to send crypto to each other through the platform.
While most encrypted messaging applications require phone numbers for registration, Status allows users to sign up for the platform using their crypto wallet addresses. However, the development phase of Status, which was first launched during the ICO boom in July 2017 and raised an astonishing $100 million for its native SNT token in less than 24 hours, took at least six years. The project was later criticized for being slow to bring a working product to market.
In April 2020, the project’s leadership, CEO Jarrad Hope and chief communications officer Carl Bennetts, were named as individual defendants in a class-action lawsuit that declared the SNT token sale an unregistered securities offering. However, by November 8, 2023, the project announced that the alpha and beta versions of its application would be released in the coming months.
Status Team Responds Promptly
In a blog post published on November 8, Status addressed some concerns of the community regarding the development of the application, stating that their initial vision of creating a consumer super-app was overly optimistic.
Status pointed out various reasons for development hiccups, including scalability challenges that led to abandoning the Whisper protocol and having to lay off staff during the 2018 crypto market crash. However, the resurgence of development activities and the rise in crypto prices at the end of 2022 helped the company get back on its feet. The Status team shared the following statement:
“The 2022 bull market provided us with the financial strength to implement Status’s updated strategy, so the next step was to scale the organization back to the level of resources needed to realize our ambitious vision.”
The project’s native SNT token is currently trading at $0.04, up 2.4% in the last 24 hours and approximately 50% over the past year. SNT is 93.4% below its all-time high of $0.68 reached on January 3, 2018, according to CoinGecko data.
