On Monday, Discord CEO Jason Citron struck fear (or joy) into the hearts of Discord fans by tweeting a screenshot of what appeared to be crypto wallets in the app, but Wednesday evening, he said the company doesn’t actually plan to ship what he was showing off.
“Thanks for all the perspectives everyone,” Citron said. “We have no current plans to ship this internal concept. For now we’re focused on protecting users from spam, scams and fraud. Web3 has lots of good but also lots of problems we need to work through at our scale. More soon.” Discord told The Verge this week that the image was from an internal hackfest.
Thanks for all the perspectives everyone. We have no current plans to ship this internal concept. For now we’re focused on protecting users from spam, scams and fraud. Web3 has lots of good but also lots of problems we need to work through at our scale. More soon.
— Jason Citron (@jasoncitron) November 11, 2021
Citron’s statement doesn’t entirely rule out the possibility of some kind of crypto / NFT integration in Discord in the future. Based on Citron’s tweet, it sounds as if the company is looking into how it can use “Web3,” which is a shorthand that often refers to a decentralized and crypto-based internet, as well as how it can protect against crypto / NFT scams that take place on the platform.
The company told The Verge something similar about its interest in crypto when we asked about a survey mentioning NFTs that happened to make the rounds just hours before Citron’s Monday tweet. Though that survey was apparently just for research, “we’re always exploring and hacking away at things we think will improve Discord for all the communities we serve,” a Discord spokesperson said. “This includes research that helps us learn about what people want.”
It doesn’t appear that there will be an official crypto integration with Discord just yet. But don’t be surprised if there eventually is.
