TON: The story of ups and downs

TON is supposed to be one of the most controversial projects in the blockchain sphere. There have been many ups and downs on its way, but the project blossomed again in 2021, thanks to its ecosystem and, more importantly, its community’s support.

The beginning

In late 2017, Pavel Durov announced the launch of the Telegram Open Network (TON), the blockchain platform based on the Telegram messenger that counted 500 million users at the time.

All these users were supposed to trade the Gram token without any governmental influence. These plans were ambitious, since Durov and his team stated that the new blockchain ecosystem allowed a million transactions per second.

A lot of investors worldwide believed in the project, since top engineers who created Vkontakte (Durov’s first digital giant) were working on it. This support helped raise a mind-blowing $1.7 billion.

TON vs SEC

In October 2019, an emergency restraint order was put on selling Gram tokens. SEC stated 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’.

Durov, in his turn, criticized SEC, saying it overstepped its authority.

The situation led to the closure of the project on May 12, 2020. However, that was just the beginning.

New era

As the project’s dev community have already been formed, several groups of enthusiasts decided to build their projects based on TON architecture.

Free TON

Free TON was launched in May 2021. The main goal of the community of 10,000 enthusiasts was to build a decentralized online ecosystem. They supported the initial idea of Pavel Durov, and the project was built on the same code.

One of the system’s main benefits consisted of its decentralized governance system, where each participant could improve the ecosystem and offer some innovations.

The nuclear company was TON Labs, the company that previously worked with the Durov brothers. In 2021, TON labs raised over $6mln, and then transformed into Everscale and separated from Telegram.

Gram to Toncoin

Before exiting the project, Telegram shared 1,45% out of 5 bln tokens with testers and developers so that they could work on the project thoroughly.

One of the Forbes sources stated that a team of testers started to mine Grams within the network and soon became the major force in the system. That’s when the testing system became the main one, and Gram was renamed to Toncoin.

Jumping ahead, by December 22 the same year, the official Telegram donations service implemented Toncoin to its ecosystem.

TON Foundation

One of the top projects based on the ideas and developments of Pavel Durov and his team is NewTON, that later transformed into TON Foundation.

In June 2021, the project’s team published an open letter asking Telegram to give them the original GitHub repository of the project and the ton.org domain. TON Foundation stated that they need the initial data as they are building the original network based on the initial Telegram developments.

Thus, the team got access to all the data by August 2021, and started to develop the open blockchain called The Open Network we know today.

The team of the project consists of skilled developers who won the contest organized by Telegram itself. This is one of the main reasons why Pavel Durov decided to give access to the project.

TON Foundation developed TON Coin. Its daily trading volume is approximately $2–3mln, and the next decade is predicted to win steady growth of investors.

Today, TON became a solid platform for testers and developers launching many promising projects. The democratic approach of Telegram founders helped develop TON and give it a second life, which will soon result in new achievements and profits.

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