# Telegram alternative for crypto communities: 6 picks > Six Telegram alternatives for crypto communities in 2026, compared on wallet identity, holder checks, paid access in USDC, and fees per payment. Every crypto group that has run on Telegram for a year keeps the same list: scam DMs that arrive before your own announcement does, accounts cloning your admins, verify links from strangers, and a holder check that comes down to a screenshot. This page is a 2026 shortlist for anyone hunting a Telegram alternative for crypto communities, judged on what each option does about those four things and what it takes from each payment. Cherry (cherry.fun) is one of the six: a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app where you sign in with a wallet, DM any wallet address, and join or create token-gated, NFT-gated, and paid group chats, with no phone number, email, or KYC. It is written for the person who owns the group: a holder room, an alpha group, or a token team's chat. ## What breaks on Telegram Four failures, and each one traces to the same root: a Telegram account is a phone number with a display name attached, and nothing in the app knows what a wallet holds. Cloning an admin costs a copied photo and a copied name. Telegram's FAQ answer to it is to report the impersonator to the anti-scam account it names. Members cannot tell your mod from the clone who DMs them a minute after they join. Encryption is narrower than the reputation. Telegram's FAQ states that all messages in secret chats use end-to-end encryption, and it describes secret chats as device-specific one-to-one conversations. A group chat has no secret mode at all. Holder proof needs a third party. Gating a Telegram group by a token means a bot, a wallet-connect site, a role, and a re-verification cycle, which is the flow a fake verify DM asks a member to follow. Meanwhile a deal in the DMs settles on a screenshot of a balance that nobody checks twice. ## How we picked Five questions decide this list, the ones an owner asks after the first time a member gets drained in their group. 1. Is the account a wallet, a phone number, or something the app issues you? 2. Who checks that a member still holds what the gate requires, and how often? 3. Can you charge for access inside the same product as the chat? 4. What does the service take from each payment? 5. Does the conversation survive the move, or do you lose the group's history and half its members? Apps with no group chat are out, which is why trading feeds and wallet-notification tools are missing. ## Telegram with Stars subscriptions The cheapest migration is no migration. Telegram's documentation describes Stars as virtual items for purchasing digital goods and services from bots and mini apps, and says bots and channels may create subscriptions that periodically charge users Stars in exchange for content and services. Channel owners receive 100% of the Stars sent as paid reactions, and a balance is withdrawn through Fragment to a TON wallet address. A subscriber is a phone number who paid, so holder-only access still needs a bot bolted on, and the impersonation problem is untouched. Fit: an audience that will not move, a loose gate, and small amounts. ## Discord with Collab.Land This is the stack most NFT and token communities already run: Discord for the rooms, a gating bot for holder roles, and a separate checkout for money. Collab.Land's site says it will ensure every new member holds the necessary tokens to join and performs regular re-verifications. Its pricing in September 2026 counts verified members, not total members: Starter free up to 25, Basic $17.99 up to 100, Premium $35 up to 1,000, Exclusive $149 up to 2,500, Elite $449 up to 7,500. The cost is not only the bill. Members connect a wallet on a third-party site to get a role, the ritual fake verify DMs imitate. Guild.xyz and Matrica are the other bots communities run for this job; the trade-offs are in [Collab.Land alternatives](https://cherry.fun/learn/compare/collab-land-alternatives/). Fit: a large Discord already built, where moving would cost more than the bots do. ## dm.fun dm.fun is a Solana-only chat app from Matrica Labs that opens a room automatically for every Solana token contract address, with charts, one-tap swaps and raid bots in the room. Its landing headline in September 2026 reads "CHAT, MEME, AND TRADE. ALL IN ONE." At its 21 May 2026 launch dm.fun went publicly live across web, iOS, Android and the Solana Seeker and added paid alpha groups billed in USDC. It courted Telegram refugees from the start: the October 2025 presale announcement for its $FUN token promised to replace Telegram for crypto. Two things to weigh. Wallets come from Privy as embedded accounts, so members are not signing in with the wallet they already trade from, and the brand voice is deliberately crude, which matters if you take sponsorships. A fuller breakdown sits in [Cherry vs dm.fun](https://cherry.fun/learn/compare/cherry-vs-dmfun/). Fit: a memecoin community whose whole identity is one contract address. ## Towns Towns is an onchain group chat running on its own node network. Its home page in September 2026 calls Towns Protocol an open messaging protocol built on Base that powers private groups and decentralized finance, under the headline "Discover the best money making group chats". Every group is minted on-chain and every membership is an NFT: Towns added membership size caps in July 2025 and told owners that once a group sells out, the OpenSea secondary market does the rest. Towns priced memberships in USDC from 16 January 2026, added recurring memberships on 21 October 2025, and gives a group owner 0.25% of trades made in their group, announced 13 June 2025. It reported 450,000+ groups and 1.7 million memberships on 13 February 2026. The friction is on the way in. The February 2026 iOS app is a separate account from the web app and asks for a phone number, and Solana does not appear on the Towns home page in September 2026. See [Cherry vs Towns](https://cherry.fun/learn/compare/cherry-vs-towns/) for the full row-by-row. Fit: a Base-native community that wants membership to be a tradable NFT. ## Cherry Cherry is the option where the chain check happens in the app. A group can carry up to five rules combined with all or any logic: a minimum token balance, an NFT from a collection, a Metaplex Core collection, ownership of a name with a given ending such as .sol or .skr, a wallet balance or trading-volume threshold, or a payment. Nobody DMs anyone a verify link, because there is no verification site to imitate. Members of gated public groups are re-checked in the background, so a wallet that sells loses access. Seeker Club, the largest Seeker owners community, is gated by a .skr domain and had more than 8,600 members in September 2026. [Seeker Club on Cherry](https://chat.cherry.fun/@seekerclub) SNS Club, a smaller room on the same rule shape, takes anyone holding a .sol name and had more than 1,400 members in September 2026. [SNS Club on Cherry](https://chat.cherry.fun/@sns) Identity is the wallet you already use: a signature signs you in, your display name comes from a name you own, and no phone number or email is collected. DMs between two wallets are end-to-end encrypted with keys derived from your wallet. Group chats are not, by design, so moderation and bots can work. A first message from a stranger lands in a Requests folder with no push notification, and a sender who wants a cold DM delivered with a notification pays a flat fee. More detail sits in [token-gated chat](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/token-gated-chat/) and [anti-spam and moderation](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/anti-spam/). Fit: a holder community, an alpha group, or a token team that wants one product for the chat, the gate and the money. ## Whop Whop is not a chat app, which is the point of listing it: it is the checkout layer many crypto sellers bolt onto Discord or Telegram. Whop describes itself in September 2026 as a place to create or run businesses with AI, and states $4.6B+ paid to businesses on Whop. Its published fees in September 2026 are 2.7% + $0.30 per successful domestic card transaction, an extra 1.5% on top for international cards, 1.5% (max $5) per ACH debit, and on the way out, 5% + $1.00 per crypto payout or $2.50 for a next-day ACH payout. Fit: buyers who pay by card and a seller who wants a marketing layer around the sale. ## A paid Telegram group alternative, in practice "Paid group" on Telegram usually means a human with a spreadsheet adding people after a transfer, or Stars going through Fragment. The wallet-native version puts the price on the room. On Cherry the price is a rule on a public group. One-time entry is a SOL fee the owner sets from 0.0001 to 100 SOL, paid in a single transaction with two legs: 70% to the owner's wallet and 30% to Cherry as of September 2026. Membership activates only when that payment confirms on-chain, so an abandoned transaction adds nobody. Recurring entry is priced in USDC from 1 to 10,000 USDC per day, week or month, billed through the official Solana Subscriptions and Allowances program: the member authorizes a plan once, each period is pulled on the same 70/30 split, and a failed pull paywalls the member until they renew. Cancelling keeps access to the end of the paid period. Three consequences before you price anything. A paid group must be public, because its page at chat.cherry.fun is the storefront where people read the rules and reviews before paying. An owner or admin invite is a lifetime comp, while a regular member's invite lands the invitee on the paywall, so the pass cannot leak. Changing the price creates a new plan and existing subscribers keep their terms. The walkthrough is in [paid communities and channels](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/paid-communities-and-channels/) and [how to sell access to an alpha group](https://cherry.fun/learn/guides/sell-access-to-an-alpha-group/). ## What Telegram still does better Reach, first. Most crypto communities already run on Telegram, and a group link needs no wallet and no install. Telegram searches every group you are in and sorts hundreds of them into folders. Its FAQ in September 2026 says groups run up to 200,000 members, and channels have no size limit. Secret chats give one-to-one conversations an end-to-end option most crypto apps still do not match for DMs. The honest read: Telegram is a better broadcast channel than the five options above, and a worse membership system than all of them. ## Side by side | Option | Sign-in | Who checks holdings | Paid access | Cut per payment | |---|---|---|---|---| | Telegram + gating bot | Phone number | A third-party bot on a wallet-connect site | Stars subscriptions, withdrawn via Fragment | Not stated for subscriptions; 100% of paid-reaction Stars to the owner (Sep 2026) | | Discord + Collab.Land | Discord account plus wallet connect | The bot, with regular re-verifications | A separate checkout | $17.99 to $449 a month by verified members (Sep 2026) | | dm.fun | Embedded wallet (Privy) | Not stated | Paid alpha groups in USDC (May 2026) | Not stated | | Towns | Embedded wallet | Membership NFT minted on Base | USDC, one-off or recurring | Not stated for memberships; owner also earns 0.25% of in-group trades (Jun 2025) | | Cherry | Your own wallet, no phone or email | The app checks the chain, re-checked in the background | One-time SOL, or 1 to 10,000 USDC per period | 30% of paid entry, owner keeps 70% (Sep 2026) | | Whop | Whop account | Not a chat app | Card, ACH or crypto checkout | 2.7% + $0.30 per domestic card sale (Sep 2026) | ## Which Telegram alternative for crypto communities to pick Choose Telegram with Stars if your members will not move and the gate can stay loose. Choose Discord with Collab.Land if the server is already large and the bots are cheaper than the migration. Choose dm.fun if the community is one memecoin and the contract address is the identity. Choose Towns if you are Base-native and want memberships to trade on a secondary market. Choose Whop if buyers pay by card and you want the marketing layer around the sale. Choose Cherry if membership means holding something on-chain, you want that checked continuously without a bot, and you want the payment and the conversation in one product. If you are moving, read [how to move a community off Telegram](https://cherry.fun/learn/guides/move-a-community-off-telegram/) first, then create the group at [chat.cherry.fun](https://chat.cherry.fun). ## FAQ ### What is the best Telegram alternative for crypto communities? It depends on what your gate has to prove. If membership means holding a token, an NFT or a name and you want that checked without a bot, Cherry checks holdings in the app and keeps re-checking them. If your community is on Base and membership should be a tradable NFT, Towns fits. If the group is a memecoin chat tied to one contract address, dm.fun opens a room per token on Solana. ### How do you make a paid Telegram alternative? Pick a place where the payment and the chat are the same product, so nobody is added by hand. On Cherry you set a price rule on a public group: a one-time SOL fee between 0.0001 and 100 SOL, or a recurring USDC price of 1 to 10,000 USDC per day, week or month. The buyer signs once, the split lands in September 2026 at 70% to the owner and 30% to Cherry, and membership starts when the payment confirms on-chain. ### Is there a Telegram replacement for crypto that keeps wallet identity? Yes. On Cherry your wallet is the account: you sign in with a wallet signature, your display name comes from a name you own, and there is no phone number, email or KYC in the path. Towns and dm.fun also tie identity to a wallet, but both issue an embedded wallet rather than using the one you already trade from. ### What is a paid Telegram group alternative that bills in USDC? Cherry bills recurring memberships in USDC through the official Solana Subscriptions and Allowances program, from 1 to 10,000 USDC per period, and Towns has priced memberships in USDC since 16 January 2026. dm.fun has billed its paid alpha groups in USDC since its 21 May 2026 launch, and none of the three asks a member for a card. ### Can I keep the Telegram group and sell access somewhere else? Many owners do. Keep Telegram as the free funnel for announcements and newcomers, and run the paid or holder-only room on a wallet-native app so the gate checks the chain. The migration steps are in our guide to moving off Telegram. ### Are crypto group chats end-to-end encrypted? Rarely. Telegram's FAQ says all messages in secret chats use end-to-end encryption, and secret chats are one-to-one and device-specific, so a group has no end-to-end option. On Cherry, DMs between two wallets are end-to-end encrypted and group chats are not, by design, so moderation and bots can work. ## Sources - [Telegram FAQ](https://telegram.org/faq). - [Telegram documentation on Stars](https://core.telegram.org/api/stars). - [Collab.Land](https://www.collab.land/) and [Collab.Land pricing](https://www.collab.land/pricing). - [Whop](https://whop.com) and [Whop pricing](https://whop.com/network/pricing/). - [Towns](https://towns.com). - [dm.fun](https://dm.fun). - [Seeker Club on Cherry](https://chat.cherry.fun/@seekerclub) and [SNS Club on Cherry](https://chat.cherry.fun/@sns).