Recently, according to the New York Times, the encrypted communication software Telegram plans to launch the first batch of Gram tokens in the next two months. The latest progress announced by the TON Chinese community shows that the TON core code has been basically completed. The public beta will officially start on September 1. This round of public beta will open the full node code and network verification module. This will be the last test version before the TON mainnet goes live. The official launch of the main network is expected to be in October this year, and the tokens will be officially issued accordingly.
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Learn about the TON platform and the Gram token
Telegram (Telegram) is an encrypted chat software jointly developed by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov and his brother, the famous computer scientist Nikolai in 2013. It is also known as "Russia's WeChat", which uses point-to-point encryption. All content will not pass through the server, and there is no third-party supervision. The biggest feature is the emphasis on privacy protection. It is because of this feature that it is also loved by the blockchain and encryption communities. According to third-party statistics, as of now, Telegram has more than 200 million daily active users worldwide, making it the largest encrypted chat software in the world.
The full name of TON is Telegram Open Network, which is a blockchain project specially established by the Telegram team in 2018. It is a scalable multi-chain blockchain architecture platform that provides multiple basic network facilities to support various on-chain services. Users can execute distributed applications based on the infrastructure provided by TON.
According to the TON white paper, the project has eight parts in total: TON blockchain, TON P2P network, TON storage, TON network proxy, TON DHT, TON service, TON DNS and TON payment.
After the mainnet is launched, Telegram should become a DAPP on the TON public chain, and Gram is a general-purpose token based on the TON blockchain system. According to the previously released white paper of the TON project, TON will issue a total of 5 billion Gram tokens without relying on "mining". The 5 billion tokens will be generated directly, and the development team will retain 4% of them. years; at least 52% of the total volume is held by Telegram, and the remaining 44% is put into the market.
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TON project development process
Preparation period: strike while the iron is hot
In December 2017, when the blockchain and cryptocurrency were gaining momentum, Telegram announced for the first time that it would develop its own blockchain platform, namely Telegram Open Network (TON), and planned to issue and circulate on TON Cryptocurrency Gram on .
In January 2018, the Telegram team released a project white paper to investors. According to the white paper, the scalability of the platform will exceed Bitcoin and Ethereum, which will make it comparable to industry giants such as Visa and MasterCard in terms of transaction speed. Higher.
In January and March 2018, Telegram completed two rounds of financing and successfully raised US$1.7 billion. According to media reports, top venture capital and international investment institutions including Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, and KPCB participated .
What is the concept of this number? It can be said to be a record amount of financing, second only to the $4 billion of the EOS project.
Moreover, according to the original plan, half of the amount was to be raised from retail investors. However, due to the fact that the amount of funds raised far exceeded the amount originally planned, and in order to avoid US regulatory issues, Telegram canceled the public-facing fundraising in April 2018. lCO.
Start-up period: slow progress
However, after the fundraising was completed, the progress of TON's entire project was relatively slow, and the time for the mainnet launch was anxious.
According to public reports, in the third quarter of 2018, TON announced that 70% of the project has been completed, and 95% of the virtual machines have been prepared;
In February 2019, Cointelegraph reported that 90% of the development of TON has been completed, and it is planned to officially release the main network and Token of the TON platform as early as March;
Accidentally missed the post, until April this year, the Telegram team released a private test version of the TON blockchain for a limited number of global developers, and some testers said that the transaction processing speed of the system is very high;
In May, Telegram officially released the TON test client TON Testnet Blockchain Lite;
In August, the TON Chinese community announced that the TON core code has been basically completed, and the public beta will officially start on September 1. This will be the last test version before the mainnet goes live
Follow-up: Token Issuance
In addition to the issue of the mainnet launch, most investors should pay attention to the situation of tokens. After all, the previous private placement to the public was cancelled, and there were many retail investors who failed to get in the car.
According to public information, on July 10 this year, TON conducted its first token sale on the Liquid exchange, similar to the popular IEO model. But it’s worth noting that this public sale doesn’t appear to be an official sale. The relevant information on the Liquid trading platform page shows that this sale is organized by Gram Asia, the largest private equity buyer in Asia, and it is a limited issue for limited customers. Users can use US dollars and USDC to subscribe for GRAM, and the token price is 4 USD/ Gram.
Precisely because it is not an official shipment, many people questioned the eye-catching token sale this time as a private equity buyer who sold and cashed out. This round of sales is of a pre-sale nature, and buyers only get quotas instead of real tokens. They will not receive tokens until they are fully issued in October.
The official launch time of Gram is October 31, 2019. After the launch of TON Network, the Gram tokens sold in this round will be unlocked and issued to investors in the next 18 months. There are 4 stages in total. 25% will be released 3 months after the online launch, 25% will be released after 6 months, 25% will be released after 12 months, and 25% will be released after 18 months.
Why before October 31st? Because this date is the deadline on the legal documents related to the project, it is a bit like an "ultimatum". The New York Times report mentioned that Telegram must launch cryptocurrency before October 31, otherwise the previous $1.7 billion fundraising may be withdrawn by investors.
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Significance and impact of TON
In the end, let’s talk about the significance of such a large blockchain project as Telegram.
As a blockchain project that created one of the records in the history of raising funds, and the financing was completed during the market bear market, coupled with the blessing of famous investors, Telegram's project has attracted much attention since last year.
Many people are very optimistic, while others hold a wait-and-see or skeptical attitude. On the one hand, some people believe that with the hundreds of millions of users and huge traffic of Telegram, entering the field of blockchain and cryptocurrency will inevitably bring a large number of real use cases and improve users' awareness of blockchain around the world; in addition, the TON mainnet also It will support mainstream currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, so it may also greatly increase the usage rate of mainstream cryptocurrencies to a certain extent.
On the other hand, some people also question whether TON’s underlying technology is strong enough to live up to their slogan of becoming a new generation of blockchains that benchmark against Bitcoin and Ethereum; Too high, after all, it took Facebook and Uber several years to raise $1 billion.
Speaking of Facebook, it just announced the launch of the stable currency Libra some time ago, and the token of Telegram will also be launched soon. They are also world-renowned social giants, and they also have a large number of users and traffic. Who can be better? Will the two go hand in hand and go hand in hand to help ignite new flames in the cryptocurrency field?
Having said that, Facebook's Libra has not yet been "born". Recently, it has faced repeated "bombing" by European and American regulators, hearings, and investigations. An important reason is Facebook's previous "privacy leak" incident, so Will Telegram, which focuses on privacy protection, escape this time?
