Because the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) won a preliminary injunction in the US court, Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, said that he would stop developing the TON project.
This injunction by the US courts prohibits Telegram from launching the TON network or distributing its Gram token to investors. Telegram had previously announced that it would launch the mainnet in April 2021.
Telegram had solicited investors’ opinions on the existence of the project before, and announced at the end of April this year that investors could choose to immediately recover 72% of their investment or 110% one year later.
The development of the TON project was stopped and investors are expected to receive a refund. Telegram has not announced the details of the refund plan. In early 2018, TON raised 1.7 billion US dollars.
The following is the original text of Pavel Durov’s blog “What is TON?” Why does it end? “, Coin new compilation.
In the past two and a half years, we and some of the best software engineers are developing the next-generation blockchain platform called TON, and we will name the cryptocurrency Gram. TON aims to share the decentralized principles first proposed by Bitcoin and Ethereum, but will be far superior to them in terms of speed and scalability.
We are very proud of the results-the technology we created promotes open, free, and decentralized exchange of values and ideas. After integrating with Telegram, TON may revolutionize the way people store and transfer funds and information.
Unfortunately, the US court prevented the realization of TON. how about it? Imagine that several people gathered their funds to build a gold mine and then divided the mined gold. Then, the judge told the mine builders: “Many people have invested in gold mines in search of profits. They don’t want their gold, but want to sell it to others. Therefore, you are not allowed to give them gold.”
If you think this judge is unreasonable, you are not alone-but this is exactly what happened to TON (mine), its investors and Grams (gold mine). The judge uses this reasoning to rule that people should not be allowed to buy or sell Grams as they would buy or sell Bitcoin.
Perhaps more paradoxically, the US court announced that Gram tokens cannot be distributed not only in the United States but also globally. why? Because it says that after launching the TON platform, American citizens may find some way of access. Therefore, to avoid this situation, even if every other country on the planet is satisfied with TON, Grams should not be distributed anywhere in the world.
This court ruling means that other countries have no sovereignty to decide what is good for their citizens and what is bad for them. If the United States suddenly decides to ban coffee and asks to close Italian coffee shops because some Americans may go to Italy, I doubt anyone will support it.
However, despite this, we made a difficult decision not to continue the TON project.
Regrettably, American judges are right on one thing: people outside the United States can vote for our president and elect our parliament, but in terms of finance and technology, we still rely on the US ). The United States can use control of the dollar and the global financial system to close any bank or bank account in the world. It can use control of Apple and Google to delete apps from the App Store and Google Play. Therefore, yes, other countries do not have complete sovereignty over the items allowed on their territory. Unfortunately, we — 96% of the world ’s population lives in other countries — rely on the decision makers selected by 4% of the population living in the United States.
The future may be different. But today, we are caught in a vicious circle: the centralized world in the past cannot restore balance because it is so centralized. We did try it. We leave it to the next generation of entrepreneurs and developers to take over the banner and learn from our mistakes.
I wrote this article to officially announce that Telegram ’s active participation in the TON project has ended. You may see (or may have seen) sites that use my name or Telegram brand or TON abbreviation to promote their projects. Don’t trust them with your money or data.
Neither the current or past members of our team have participated in any of these projects. Although there may be networks based on the technology we built for TON, we will not have any contact with them and are unlikely to support them in any way. So please be careful not to let anyone lie to you.
At the end of this article, I wish all those who strive for decentralization, balance and equality around the world good luck. You are fighting a valuable battle. This battle is probably the most important battle of our generation. We hope you succeed where we failed.