Today everyone knows Telegram. This is one of the most popular messengers along with WhatsApp, Viber or WeChat. However, unlike them, Telegram has global plans for development in the blockchain sphere.
In 2017, it became known about the creation of Telegram Open Network decentralized environment. Since then, ICO TON has become the most anticipated event. In this article we will tell in detail how the history of Telegram, TON began, and how it developed, what we already have, what plans in the short and long term has the team.
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TON news, and also the information how to buy Gram cryptocurrency, you can found on the Telegram channel https://t.me/t9gramEN
History and ICO Telegram TON
Telegram messenger was released six years ago, and Pavel Durov more than once emphasized that there is no advertising in his product and never will be. Unfortunately, advertising is the main form of income for most Internet applications, and messengers are no exception. However, the blockchain opened up new perspectives for Telegram in terms of monetization.
In the early winter 2017, Pavel Durov in an interview for Bloomberg said that soon Telegram will face big changes and that finally there was a way to monetize the project without harming the “mental health” of users. And a week later, currently the former director of the Telegram Anton Rosenberg, announced on its Facebook page that Telegram will hold an ICON TON. The community reacted with enthusiasm, and everyone began to look forward to this event. Likely, Pavel Durov and the Telegram team’s plans to create a blockchain platform a long time ago, because already in January 2018, a 132-page document with a description of the project, WhitePaper TON, appeared on the network. In addition to describing the technology, it also reports on the release of the Gram cryptocurrency (GRAM).
A big surprise for the crypto community was the news that Telegram held a closed pre-ICO, without first reporting this to the media. Pavel Durov decided to do everything according to the “law”, and in February 2018, an application was submitted to the SEC with the registration of the Telegram TON ICO, the first round of which brought $ 850 million from 81 investors. The minimum entry threshold was $ 20 million, at the same time, the media reported that the presale participants were carefully selected according to the criterion of proximity to the project management and their own fame.
Investors could buy tokens with a very good discount, however, the condition was specified in the contract, that for 18 months after the release of the Gram cryptocurrency on the exchanges in 2019, they will not be able to sell the acquired tokens. This will make the coin less volatile.
Some media outlets reported about crazy hype around Telegram TON's pre-ICO. Instead of the planned $ 850 million applications from those wishing to invest in the project gained as much as $ 3.8 billion. And investors who are not on the list, said that they were offered to redeem tokens with a margin of 40%.
Meanwhile, the crypto community was looking forward to the Telegram TON crowdfunding. However, in May 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that that the founders held a second round of raising financing for another $ 850 million and decided to abandon the public sale of tokens. The fact that the funds in the amount of $ 1.7 billion from two rounds of financing in which private investors participated was sufficient and it was cited as the reason.
Insider sources report that in early February 2019, investors received a letter with a notification that the network is 90% ready and the launch of Testnet TON is scheduled for late March 2019. Later, a video appeared on the network demonstrating the operation of the Telegram wallet, but officially this is nothing more than an assumption from one of the designers.
A document was also published, allegedly compiled by Pavel Durov (however not signed by him) that if the main network is not launched before the end of October 2019, investors will receive their money back. But there is still no official confirmation of this.
So, in the end, $ 1.7 billion was raised. WhitePaper Telegram TON also has token distribution information:
A minimum of 52% will go to the company's reserve to protect the young cryptocurrency from speculative trading;
44% sold to investors;
4% (200 million TON) will be distributed between developers with the condition of “freezing” of tokens for four years.
The developers also introduced the Roadmap Telegram Open Network, according to which absolutely all services will be launched in the second quarter of 2019.
Why Durov Creates Telegram TON
Why create another project if there are already several hundred of similar? However, the Telegram team considers that the blockchain platforms, which are available now, cannot provide an effective solution of existing problems, namely:
There is no decentralized alternative to Visa and Mastercard – none of the cryptocurrencies, and, especially, Bitcoin and Ethereum with their network speeds of 7 and 15 transactions per second, respectively (we are not talking about Lightning Network technology) unable to compete with centralized banking systems;
Crypto-wallet interfaces do not meet the “user friendly” criterion – when users come to the crypto world, they are faced with problems of buying, storing and conducting operations with cryptocurrencies;
Lack of practical use of cryptocurrencies – the use of cryptocurrency to pay for goods and services is possible on a very limited number of sites, and cryptocurrencies themselves are more in demand by investors and traders, not by ordinary users.
This information has been described in WhitePaper TON. In addition, in the same document, the creators say that Telegram has all the necessary data to solve the above problems:
It is fast and has good scalability indicators (WhitePaper states that the Telegram TON blockchain will be able to process up to 1 million transactions per second);
It has a clear and accessible interface even for beginners (the developers will create an entire ecosystem, which will include a wallet, an exchange platform, and a personal identification system);
There is a large audience that is already ready to use the product (at the beginning of 2018, the Telegram audience amounted to 200 million users).
Telegram Open Network Team
We can say that Telegram TON is a “family project”, because the idea and its implementation are belong to the Durov brothers – Pavel and Nikolay. If Pavel Durov is the face of the project and a public figure, then Nikolai is the “head”, so thanks to his brilliant talent as a programmer and his skills as a mathematician, the entire technical basis of TON was created. Earlier, the brothers created the most popular Runet social network – VK, however, due to pressure from the Russian authorities, they were forced to “abandon” the project.
Nikolay Durov
Nikolay is one of the most famous programmers and mathematicians of our time. He has a Ph.D. from Bonn University (Germany) and St. Petersburg State University in the field of information technology. Nikolay began programming at the age of nine, and at age 13 he created a full-fledged OS for microprocessors Intel 80386, written in x86.
Nikolay developed the entire technical base for VK, and then for Telegram. In 2014, he became interested in bitcoin and decentralized technologies in general.
Pavel Durov
Pavel gained world fame after the crazy success of the VK social network, which occupied about 70% of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian markets, displacing the influence of Facebook and other social networks. But in 2014, after a conflict with the authorities, who required a user database and censorship, Pavel was forced to “sell” the project.
The second large-scale project was Telegram, launched in 2013, which was originally aimed at anonymity and confidentiality. In the same 2013, Pavel became interested in cryptocurrencies and invested $ 1.5 million of his savings in bitcoin, which he has been still “hodl”.
Telegram TON Architecture and Technology
According to the information in the WhitePaper Telegram Open Network, platform architecture will consist of one main blockchain and 292 additional networks. Such device that will allow network speed indicators of millions of transactions per second with minimal fees.
How Telegram TON developers plan to achieve processing speeds of millions of transactions per second. And all thanks to the following technologies:
The paradigm of infinite sharding – support for sharding technology means that blockchains can be disconnected or combined to accept changes in real time. This will speed up the generation of new blocks and eliminate delays in the transaction confirmation process and, as a result, reduce fees;
Instant Hypercube Routing – artificial intelligence technology, which provides almost instant routing between TON blockchains. Moreover, the size of the system does not affect the speed of information exchange, therefore, even with the functioning of millions of blockchains, the speed will be maximum;
Proof-of-Stake Algorithm – TON will work on the PoS consensus algorithm, in which nodes must make a “deposit” in platform tokens, to ensure system reliability and consensus through a Byzantine fault tolerance protocol. This approach allows you to make transactions fast and cheap;
Distributed 2-D Registers – in Telegram TON it will be possible to “build” new correct blocks on top of any invalid blocks. This will avoid unnecessary forks. This approach will make it possible to exclude situations in which transactions are invalid due to errors.
Blockchain
Telegram Open Network (TON) will consist of the following elements:
TON Storage – distributed storage of large volumes of files and data (such as YouTube, only on the peer-to-peer network). Will support Torrent technology and smart contracts;
TON Proxy – a proxy platform that will be used to anonymize the identity of users and the IP addresses of TON nodes;
TON Services – a service for integrating dApps and web browsers;
TON DNS – platform for naming to accounts, nodes, services and smart contracts;
TON Payments is a platform on which it will be possible to conduct micropayments from user accounts to addresses of other services.
Telegram Messenger Integration with TON
Thanks to the introduction of the TON platform in the Telegram messenger, many people will get access to cryptocurrencies, the use of which will be an intuitive process.
Easy Wallet
An easy wallet will be integrated into the Telegram messenger app, which will allow the mass of users to store their crypto assets on the reliable TON blockchain. In addition, it will act as a client of the Telegram Open Network (TON), in which transactions will be verified and users will have access to launch and manage smart contracts.
In theory, thanks to the popularity of Telegram, the TON wallet can become the most popular cryptocurrency wallet. Also in TON Wallet, first of all, the native cryptocurrency of the Gram platform (GRAM) will be added.
Secure IDs
TON will bring another feature to Telegram Messenger – a secure universal ID, which the developers called a virtual passport. The principle will be that the user will have to upload his documents once to pass the AML & KYC check. After successful verification, he will receive a virtual passport, which can be presented in all services that require proof of identity. The data will be stored in the Telegram TON blockchain in encrypted form, and this information will be available only to the user.
Telegram TON – this is one of the largest blockchain projects, first of all, thanks to the personality of Pavel Durov and the popularity of the Telegram messenger. Therefore, we will observe with interest its development and implementation of large-scale plans, set by the team.
Gram Cryptocurrency: Where to Buy
Now you can’t buy Gram, since the cryptocurrency did not go on sale, it was sold at ICO TON among large investors.
The creator of TON, Pavel Durov, warned users on his Twitter that all offers to purchase GRAM are fake.
If you see or receive offers to "buy Grams", let us know at
Pavel Durov
The only way to buy a Gram cryptocurrency is to wait for the official launch of the network and the free sale of Gram in the market.
We remind you if you want to get the latest news about Telegram TON, we recommend subscribing to the largest channel in Telegram – https://t.me/tgTONme
