The Rebirth of TON: Reconnecting with Telegram, 800 Million Users May Achieve Large-Scale Web3 Applications

Author: Chloe, PANews

On September 13, Telegram announced a formal partnership with the TON Foundation at the Token2049 event in Singapore, integrating TON's self-custody crypto wallet "TON Space." This means that all Telegram wallet users can start using TON Space immediately, with plans to roll out the service to global Telegram users in November this year.

At the Token 2049 event, Telegram CTO John Hyman and TON Foundation President Steven Yun attended the speech together. Steven Yun stated that future projects built on the TON blockchain will have priority access to Telegram's advertising platform, Telegram Ads. Steven even mentioned, "Telegram will only integrate with the TON blockchain."

With over 800 million users globally, the popular messaging app Telegram has instantly become a gold mine for the TON ecosystem. TON has not chosen between "focusing on making products or services the best" and "relying on marketing strategies to expand users." It can be said that it was created to serve Telegram from the very beginning. Despite many obstacles along the way, it is only a matter of time before these 800 million people are introduced to the TON ecosystem.

Additionally, Steven set expectations for the integration, stating, "In the next 3-5 years, we estimate that about 30% of Telegram's active users will enter the TON blockchain, laying the foundation for broader adoption of Web3 technology."

Indeed, Steven's statement makes sense. The biggest challenge for blockchain projects in acquiring new users has not been the difficulty of use but rather the high entry barriers for users. However, TON can seamlessly connect with Telegram. For example, in terms of payment functionality, Telegram users can directly send TON and BTC to friends in chat rooms, similar to WeChat Pay, and this simple operation is key to Web3's potential to reach a wider audience.

A few days after the Token 2049 event, on September 15, Telegram founder Pavel Durov posted on his Telegram to congratulate TON. He stated, "Years ago, we built a scalable and fast blockchain technology, TON, to serve hundreds of millions of users on Telegram, successfully demonstrating the potential of Web 3.0 on Telegram, where users can directly own their social media identities for the first time in history. Now, Telegram is taking blockchain technology a step further by integrating it into Telegram, collaborating with the TON community to add their TON wallet as a mini-application within Telegram."

Durov also announced that Telegram and the TON blockchain will have closer cooperation and previewed that starting in November this year, the TON wallet will be open to all users outside the U.S. and in other countries/regions.

Three Years After Regulatory Shutdown, New TON Reunites with Telegram

In 2017, Telegram developed a blockchain project called Telegram Open Network (the first generation of TON), which, backed by Telegram, was seen as a promising L1 public chain. TON's initial market goal was to establish a complete blockchain ecosystem and issued its native crypto asset, Gram.

In 2018, TON conducted an initial coin offering to specific investors, raising $1.7 billion, which at the time became the second-largest amount raised in ICO history.

In October 2019, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suddenly announced "emergency action and obtained a temporary restraining order" against TON. The SEC believed that under the Securities Act of 1933, Gram was an unregistered security and could not be sold to U.S. investors. Of the $1.7 billion raised the previous year, over $400 million came from U.S. investors. Therefore, the SEC had the right to issue an injunction immediately, quickly gather evidence, return illegal gains, prohibit them from selling or distributing more Grams, and impose civil fines.

In response, Telegram appealed the next day, arguing that once TON was launched, GRAM would only be a currency or commodity, similar to gold and silver. However, the SEC insisted that Telegram had violated U.S. securities laws.

Originally, investors expected that "the Telegram blockchain network would launch as usual, unaffected by regulatory events," but the reality was completely different.

The key moment when Telegram and TON separated was on May 8, 2020. Unable to wait for Telegram to resolve regulatory issues, Telegram's technical partner TON Labs released a forked version called Free TON. TON Labs CEO Alexander Filatov emphasized that to distinguish it from the original TON version, this forked version was named Free TON, with the token called "Ton Crystals," and Telegram did not participate in the release of TON Labs, which was essentially an independent release of open-source software.

At that time, the token supply cap was also set at 5 billion, with 85% allocated for free distribution to TON partners and users, 10% for developers, and 5% for validating nodes.

Soon after, on May 13, 2020, Telegram founder Pavel Durov publicly announced the abandonment of the TON blockchain project and was fined $18.5 million by the SEC. "Over the past two and a half years, we have invested a lot of manpower and effort into researching the underlying technology of blockchain, far exceeding the performance of Bitcoin and Ethereum in terms of speed and scalability. I am very proud of the progress TON has made today, but now, due to interference from the U.S. courts, we have to announce the shutdown of TON."

Regarding GRAM, Durov explained in a letter to investors that the reason the U.S. court prohibited TON was that it did not allow TON to sell its token GRAM to U.S. or even global investors. Durov stated in the letter that this was absurd. "Unfortunately, we—96% of the world's population—must comply with decisions made by decision-makers chosen by only 4% of Americans."

Finally, Durov also publicly declared that in the future, other cryptocurrency projects would adopt the name and technology of TON, stating at that time that Telegram would "not" support them in any way.

In May 2021, a developer community named NEWTON continued to research TON on behalf of Telegram. NEWTON was spontaneously established by the Telegram community and was independent of Telegram, later renamed the TON Foundation in 2021. TON was also changed from Telegram Open Network to The Open Network, and the on-chain crypto token was renamed from Gram to Ton Coin.

However, although Durov previously stated that he would no longer participate in any technical development of TON, he still strongly supported the TON Foundation and the TON blockchain, actively participating in cooperation to promote the project's development.

On April 12, 2022, the TON Foundation officially announced the launch of its first ecosystem fund, the "TONcoin Fund," which received $250 million in investments from institutions and exchanges such as Huobi Incubator, KuCoin Ventures, MEXC Pioneer Fund, 3Commas Capital, TON Miners, and Kilo Funds. The fund will be used to finance, incubate, and support projects based on TON, as well as for hackathons, educational programs, and grants.

Different Parent for TON, Key Shift from Durov's Initial Skepticism to "Must Support"?

Even though TON shares the same acronym as the project originally founded by Durov, it no longer stands for Telegram Open Network. Instead, when the TON that Durov abandoned transitioned to being governed by developers, the team not only readjusted the project's purpose but also renamed it "The Open Network," with the token now using Ton Coin instead of the original native currency Gram from the Telegram TON project.

Initially, Durov dismissed the project, even warning followers that this TON had no relation to Telegram. However, since last year, Durov's attitude has clearly changed.

On August 23, 2022, Durov publicly praised the domain name auction conducted by TON, suggesting that Telegram could perhaps launch an auction market for usernames, groups, and channels, and attempt to use TON (The Open Network) as the underlying blockchain for that market. Subsequently, on December 7 of last year, Telegram officially announced that users could have a Telegram account without a SIM card and log in using anonymous numbers supported by the blockchain on the Fragment platform. Related reading: "Telegram Launches Blockchain-Based Anonymous Login, Prices for Anonymous Accounts on Fragment Will Rise"

Durov also stated that he was "impressed" by the recent TON domain name auction and asked everyone to imagine how successful it would be if integrated with Telegram, which has 800 million users.

Now it is evident that the TON Foundation and Telegram have officially announced their partnership, launching the self-custody crypto wallet TON Space for users, marking a true end to their years of love-hate relationship? We can also look forward to what effects the future outreach of 800 million users will bring.