Nikolay Durov finished development of the Telegram Open Network platform by 90%

On the photo: Ph.D. Nikolay Durov, author of the MTProto encryption protocol, a number of key VKontakte subsystems and the TON blockchain platform

Telegram will show investors the blockchain platform TON (Telegram Open Network) for cryptocurrency Gram for a month. Several sources from The Bell and the Vedomosti newspaper confirmed that the meeting will take place in Dubai, although the exact date has not yet been set. The launch of the main network is scheduled for March.

Pavel Durov announced the plan to develop a blockchain platform with his own cryptocurrency in January 2018. TON has to solve the key problem of modern cryptocurrencies - low performance, which makes it difficult to fully replace the global payment systems. If Visa and Mastercard process about 50-60 thousand operations per second, then Bitcoin and Etherium are only 7 and 15 operations per second, respectively.

Hundreds of millions of Telegram users will help the system quickly turn around to a large audience. As a kind of model we can consider the Chinese messenger WeChat, which has already become the standard for making financial payments in China.

More information about the technical infrastructure of TON, see the review on Habré:

• “TON: Telegram Open Network. Part 1: Introduction, Network Layer, ADNL, DHT, Overlay Networks
• “TON: Telegram Open Network. Part 2: Blockchains, Sharding

The author took the review material from the Telegram Open Network research article, which was written by Nikolai Durov, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, who is also the author of the MTProto encryption protocol (underlies the Telegram messenger) and a number of key VKontakte subsystems. Nicholas is called a brilliant programmer and a gray cardinal in the company.

The screenshot shows a brief listing of Nikolai's awards from the official TON brochure.



A month after the official announcement of Telegram Group Inc. and TON Issuer Inc. (both registered in the British Virgin Islands) attracted $ 850 million from 81 investors in a private placement of securities. This figure was published in the reporting of companies before the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). At the same time, there is information that the demand for paper has far exceeded the supply: applications came in at $ 3.8 billion . The sale of Telegram securities has raised more money than the IPO of almost all Russian companies in recent years. And it is also a world record in ICO size - not a single foreign startup has ever come close to such amounts.

According to the plan, we wanted to start testing the platform before the end of 2018. If the platform is not launched before October 31, 2019, Telegram promised to return the money to investors, although it warned that this was not guaranteed.

After Ico, a second round of financing was held, under which investors were offered up to 1.05 billion TON (grams) tokens. The total number of native tokens is 5 billion, 4% of them will remain to developers, 52% are in reserve, and 44% will be sold to investors. The price formula (p) for each nth token is listed on page 16 of the official prospectus:



At the first stage of the second round, the price of tokens is $ 1.33 per gram. This price is four times higher than at the first stage, when $ 0.38 was taken for 1 gram. Other sources said that the cost of 1 gram rose to $ 1.5. Investors were invited to finance through venture funds iTechCapital and Da Vinci Capital. There is information that serious Russian investors have also invested a lot of money in TON.

In general, Telegram attracted $ 1.7 billion from investors.

Now the TON platform is ready by about 90%, writes the @Tgram telegram-channel with reference to one of the investors. The testnet of the Testnet blockchain will be opened in January, and in February an audit of the test platform will be held to find errors and flaws. In March 2019, a working version of the Mainnet blockchain platform will be presented. The Durov team announced to investors that the TON project should be ready for launch at the beginning of the year, but there may be a delay of 2-3 months "due to the innovative nature of the development."

Currently TON Issuer Inc. actively working with cryptobirds in Japan, China and the UK. The first country in which Gram starts to be traded is Japan.

What will Telegram be like in 2019?

The unofficial version of the channel Tgram

1. Telegram bots that accept credit card payments today will soon be able to exchange cryptocurrency for Fiat without legal nuances. First of all, users will be able to buy GRAM and then convert it into other digital currencies on stock exchanges. Thus, GRAM will become a link between the fiat world and the crypto-world, which bitcoin used to be.
   
2. Since GRAM allows micropayments to be profitable, users will be able to make donations to their favorite channels or individuals. In addition, to pay a subscription, service or product in 2019 can be completely automated.
   
3. Soon the link between advertisers and channel administrators will be as transparent as possible. Tools will be introduced to analyze the advertising platform, estimate the cost, see honest statistics. In addition, all transactions will be guaranteed on a pay-per-click / view system, and transactions will be conducted in GRAM.
   
4. According to the creators, the most convenient crypto wallet will be integrated into Telegram. Light Wallet will use minimal resources while being protected by encryption keys and duplicated in the TON blockchain. Whitepeper says it will be the most popular in the world because of its ease of use.
   
   A database of decentralized applications will also be available (like Google Play or the App Store), which is also integrated into the messenger.