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

‘Neither Privacy nor Business’: Top Solana and Zcash Proponent Urges Crypto Industry to Quit Telegram after Helius co-founder and CEO Mert Mumtaz used a compromised Ethereum engineer’s deleted account to warn Web3 teams off the app on May 13, 2026. Telegram is not some harmless side tab in crypto. It does at least five jobs at once: launch feed, deal room, support desk, token megaphone and, through $TON, part of the adoption pitch. My take: that mix is exactly the problem.

The case was Dominik Clemente, known as dcbuilder.eth. According to the source post, hackers compromised his Telegram account, then Telegram’s support team deleted it. Gone. Mumtaz said independent builders hit by hacks or phishing can lose years of contacts, channels and work, while serious support and account protection appear to be mostly available to large corporate partners. I’ll be honest: that lands badly. Crypto can move billions through Solana, Ethereum and Zcash rails, then still depend on one deleted messenger account to hold the social map together.

And this is where it gets uncomfortable for $TON. Pavel Durov keeps promoting the TON ecosystem while Telegram presents itself as the default messenger for blockchain users. Most app-risk takes stop at “users are still there.” That is only half right. If Solana and Zcash builders start treating Telegram as unsafe for real operations, traders may split Telegram’s consumer reach from its credibility as crypto infrastructure. I would not shrug that off. It could affect $TON sentiment around any user growth or ecosystem news tied to Telegram distribution after May 13, 2026.

Mumtaz’s criticism also lands directly in the privacy trade. The source says he has become one of the louder advocates for on-chain privacy and a visible supporter of Zcash, so his complaint about Telegram’s regular chats lacking default end-to-end encryption will land with ZEC holders and privacy developers. Why does this matter? Because privacy tokens often trade less like payment coins and more like regulatory mood rings. Context, not source fact: ZEC has reacted before to exchange access, surveillance fights and policy tone. When a Solana infrastructure CEO ties privacy, account security and developer work into one complaint, I read it as more than an app gripe.

There is a regulatory angle too, even though the source does not cite a new SEC or CFTC action. Crypto firms already live under tighter scrutiny after the centralized platform failures of 2022. Bad communications can become evidence. They can become liability. They can also become a support nightmare at the worst possible moment. Context, not source fact: after FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11, 2022, BTC traded below the $17,000 area and ETH stayed under pressure as counterparty risk replaced growth talk. A lost Telegram account is smaller. Obviously. Still, the lesson rhymes: infrastructure that feels convenient in a bull market can become a compliance problem when stress hits.

Mumtaz compared Telegram unfavorably with Signal for privacy and Slack for large blockchain teams. That criticism hits daily workflow, not just public optics. A Solana team, a Zcash privacy project or an Ethereum builder may still use Telegram for community reach. The source says critics see it as unfit for sensitive internal work. Counter to the usual advice, this is not simply “move everything to the secure app.” Public communities and internal operations are two different surfaces. For investors, that split matters. Mass adoption can help a token story. Weak operational trust can still scare serious money away.

The market link is sharper because Telegram sits between retail onboarding and token promotion. $TON benefits from the idea that Telegram can turn chat users into blockchain users. Mumtaz is poking at the business side of that pitch. Is this overkill? For a casual chat, maybe. For incident response, access control and internal coordination, no. If developers move those functions to Signal, Slack or decentralized messaging apps, Telegram may still work for announcements and communities. But it would lose the more valuable work: the places where teams make decisions and protect keys, channels and customer access.

For SOL, the read-through is less direct but still worth watching. Mumtaz runs Helius, a Solana infrastructure company, and his public stance shows Solana builders pushing reliability and privacy-adjacent norms beyond the chain itself. Context, not source fact: Solana’s market story has leaned on infrastructure credibility after past outage debates, and SOL traders often move fast when developer confidence becomes visible. Yes, this contradicts the easy version of the story that says “Telegram risk is only $TON risk.” Bear with me. A break with Telegram does not change Solana throughput, but it does show top builders treating operational security as part of the ecosystem’s competitive stack.

What this means

This episode says crypto’s social layer is a market layer now. Telegram can still help $TON with marketing and mass adoption, as the source notes, but Mumtaz’s May 13, 2026 criticism frames it as weak for privacy and business use. My read: the cleanest tickers are $TON, where adoption depends on trust in Telegram, and ZEC, where the privacy trade gets fresh attention from a Solana-aligned voice. SOL is the secondary watch, not the headline.

Watch whether major Solana, Ethereum or Zcash builders move critical channels away from Telegram after May 13, 2026. For traders, the tells are specific: $TON reactions around Telegram ecosystem news, ZEC volume when the privacy debate heats up, and whether SOL builders turn this into a wider push for secure decentralized messaging. If the conversation burns on X for 72 hours and dies, fine. Noise. If teams actually move operations, it becomes infrastructure risk.