The Open Network (TON)

Basics

• Started in:
• Based in: Russia
• Telegram is a chat app similar to Whatsapp. It is widely used in the crypto community.
• As FlatOutCrypto put it (23-10-2019):

"Why use Telegram?

Because you really can’t be bothered to keep up to date with crypto but want to waste time anyway, so you join mindless project Telegram groups to kid yourself that you’re just “keeping up to date with developments”.

Any good stuff on it?

If you’re lucky you’ll stumble upon a few sensible groups with focused discussion. Many project groups can be good sources of debate prior to the influx of bots and moonbois at ICO. And you’ll be forced to use it at some point if you hold assets for substantial periods because otherwise you’ll miss (or more realistically, feel like you’re missing) important project updates.

Also, where else can you go to abuse the project teams of coins you’ve lost money on? Or at least, the third party community admins they’ve hired to manage the groups for them."

• Was planned to launch their own blockchain in 3-2019 but got closed down (12-5-2020).

History and Forks

• From Cointelegraph (6-5-2020):

"Telegram recently delayed their open network, TON, and their cryptocurrency, GRAM, once again. There is one related project that has not experienced these setbacks, however. TON OS, an operating system for the TON blockchain, will soon get an open source release.

The project’s core infrastructure developers, TON Labs, are planning to open source the main components of the TON OS on GitHub tomorrow. Mitja Goroshevsky, CTO at TON Labs, confirmed the news to Cointelegraph on May 6."

TON Labs to issue a token known as TON Cash within a month

As reported by industry publication, ForkLog, the release includes TON Node in the Rust programming language, command line interface, TON Multi signature Wallet smart contract, as well as tools for launching TON validators. The report notes that within a month, TON Labs also plans to issue its decentralized browser, Surf, its staking pool, DePool, and the token known as TON Cash.

In conjunction with the TON OS open source release, TON Labs is joining the Free Software Foundation (FSF), a major free software movement. As such, all the components of the TON OS are being launched as a free software. According to the developers, the idea of a permissionless blockchain in a closed source is absurd. TON Labs reportedly felt that joining the FSF will help them maintain free use of the application as well as the TON blockchain."

• From Decrypt (29-5-2020)

"The Chinese community group for the Telegram Open Network today announced that it is launching its own version of the blockchain. The Chinese project to launch TON is one among several trying to keep Telegram’s magic alive. There’s Free TON and NewTON, both of which want to get the Telegram Open Network online, using open source-code published by Telegram."

Competition

• A comparison (21-4-2020) with Status and Signal was done by Status.

Team, investors, Partnerships, etc.

Team

• TON Labs; The project’s core infrastructure developers

Investors

• Part of (9-3-2020) the portfolio of Arrington XRP Capital.