TON history
Telegram’s blockchain project, the TON network, and ecosystem have caused a lot of commotions back in the day. Still, as we enter 2022, it is barely spoken of or seen in the cryptocurrency digests, and the hype has almost died down. How did it go from being one of the supposedly most promising projects and coveted by investors to becoming practically history over the span of just a few years?
Let’s take a look at TON’s story, and this can safely be considered a ‘where are they now’ story.
The mastermind behind a TON
Pavel Durov, TON’s original creator, does not lack fame or experience with big-name Internet projects. He is considered a visionary not just in Russia, his homeland, but also abroad and has been maintaining a mystery-filled image ever since his self-imposed exile from Russia. He used to describe his aspirations as wanting to be an Internet Totem as early as his high school graduation times. His first big success was when he founded VK, one of the world’s largest language-specific social networks and the 14th most visited website. After Durov left it, he launched the Telegram messenger, famous for its ad-free, censure-free policy. Durov has a reputation of an anti-system libertarian and a tech guru, much of which went into how the TON project was initially viewed.
TON’s swift rise and hurtling fall
TON was conceived as an expansion of the Telegram ecosystem in 2017. It was supposed to be a blockchain platform with its own cryptocurrency, GRAM. The ecosystem included its own payment system, storage, proxy, DNS, and Services to host third-party dApps, and a Virtual Machine to process proof-of-stake smart contracts. From the very start, TON promoted security and anonymity as its primary values and claimed to focus on user-friendliness. An ICO, carried out in 2017, garnered a whopping $1.7 billion with some of the world’s richest and most famous entrepreneurs and companies as backers.
Development was supposedly completed somewhere in 2019, and it was also when the mainnet launch was to take place. However, it never happened. After several times postponing the event, it became clear that there was something going on with TON. And this became absolutely apparent when TON was slapped by SEC with an emergency restraint order on selling the Gram tokens in October 2019.
Claiming to be a ‘libertarian blockchain,’ the TON gathered a lot of publicity and speculations about what kind of illicit activity its widespread, easy access, and complete anonymity would attract. Many speculated that it could be used primarily for black market purposes, it’s communication and transactions virtually untraceable. The scare was big, and it’s impossible to say it was ungrounded. As a messenger social network, Telegram already was notorious for multiple barely censored channels with content bordering on illegal or being such.
SEC has taken a very firm stand on putting a stopper to TON’s development. They announced that “the defendants have failed to provide investors with information regarding Grams and Telegram’s business operations, financial condition, risk factors, and management that the securities laws require” This was a huge reputational blow and multiple investors started to withdraw their funds. By May 2020 Durov had officially shut the project down with the promises to return the investments in some form or other and accusations of the American court decisions policing the whole world.
TON’s Legacy
Of course, a project like TON could not go down silently. With a huge following and a community of contributors like it had, it is no surprise that it lives on, although, independent from its original The Free TON project was launched in May 2020 and uses the same code. Although it was being developed by many of those working on the original TON, its biggest drawback is that it has nothing to do with Telegram’s half-a-billion user base. No investor money is so far involved in the project, or, at least, no amounts worthy of note, and its token, the GRAM Crystal has never made it higher than the bottom of the second thousand in the Coinmarketcap’s list. This is not the sole TON successor, there being also Newton, a competing project. Even though both claim to continue carrying Durov’s torch and strive for freedom, privacy and anonymity, both seem to be very low on the international radar.
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