TON GRAM (Telegram Open Network)

To launch Gram, Pavel Durov attracted $1.7 billion in investments from 175 investors, including Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and Hollywood actor Jared Leto.

But the Securities Commission (SEC) recognized Gram tokens as securities. According to the SEC, Durov developed a scheme that would allow investors to make money by reselling Gram on open markets. A US court agreed with the commission’s arguments and banned the issuance of cryptocurrency.

As a result, investors were left without the promised Gram, and the TON blockchain itself never launched. Some investors demanded their investments back from Durov and went to court. As a result, Telegram returned more than $1.2 billion to them.

In May 2022, Pavel Durov left the failed project, and Telegram did not receive its own blockchain platform, which could solve the problem of monetizing the messenger.

Introduction

Cryptocurrencies and other blockchain-based technologies have the potential to make the world a safer, more equitable, and more automated place. However, to this day, not a single cryptocurrency has been able to break into the mass market and become the financial basis of any state. This document describes the vision of the new GRAM cryptocurrency and the TON (Telegram Open Network) ecosystem, capable of meeting the needs of hundreds of millions of consumers, including 200 million Telegram users.

The launch of TON GRAM is planned in 2022 and this cryptocurrency will be based on the Proof-of-Stake system - TON (Telegram Open Network, and after 2022 The Open Network) - a network designed to host a new generation of cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications. The protocol and other components of TON are described in detail in the Whitepaper, while this document provides a general overview of the proposed technology and its use.

Will there be an open ICO?

Public ICO TON
If you are expecting the GRAM cryptocurrency to be presented at a public ICO, you should be disappointed. According to the report filed with the SEC, the total amount raised in two rounds was $1.7 billion. Based on this information, various publications began to write that there would be no public ICO of TON.

Don't believe scam sites that talk about the public ICO TON. As we said above, it is impossible to buy GRAM cryptocurrency this way. The only source where you can get information about Telegram token sales is the official website.

Problems and challenges

Bitcoin has established itself as “digital gold”, and Ethereum has established itself as an effective platform for selling tokens. But, today there is not a single cryptocurrency that could be used to exchange values in our daily lives.

Despite their revolutionary potential, existing cryptocurrencies do not have the qualities necessary for the mass consumer. Today there are three main problems:

Bitcoin and Ethereum play an important role in the blockchain ecosystem, but cannot massively replace VISA or Mastercard, since the current architecture has restrictions on the maximum number of transactions per second. This problem results in insufficient speed and high costs.
New users who are just starting to use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies often cannot understand basic questions: how to buy, where to store and how to transfer their funds
The market for goods and services where cryptocurrency can be used is limited, which is why cryptocurrency is more used as an investment tool than for ordinary consumers.

The current state of blockchain technology is reminiscent of automotive design in 1870—promising, enthusiastic, but ineffective and too complex for the masses. As a result, no decentralized financial platform can replace current centralized solutions in the market.

How much will one Gram cost?

Everyone who first heard about the Gram cryptocurrency is interested in how much it will cost. Naturally, no one is talking about a specific price, because the coin has not even been launched yet. Therefore, it is almost impossible to make a forecast about how much Gram coin will cost. Of course, if we talk about an accurate forecast.

There is very little information about the new coin on the Internet. But if you believe the forecasts of several foreign analysts, its price may be as follows:

The price of 1 TON will be equal to 1.5 dollars. Most experts support this forecast;
The price of 1 TON will be equal to 2–2.5 dollars. This is not such a popular option, but there are also many experts on its side;
The price of 1 TON during the public sale period will be 5–6 dollars per coin.

Of course, there are other opinions, and the most daring ones. Some "experts" are talking about a price of $10 or even more. But it is doubtful that such forecasts will come true.

Despite the fact that the exact cost of the Telegram Gram cryptocurrency is unknown, experts agree on one thing. They say that the capitalization of this digital resource will reach third position in the overall list. And this is a forecast only for the first few months of trading.

The founder of DigRate Stanislav Shakirov also spoke about forecasting rates:

“GUESSING ABOUT THE COST OF AN UNANNOUNCED TOKEN IS A THANKFUL ACTIVITY. IN ADDITION, LIKELY, THE PRICE WILL NOT BE FIXED. THE TEAM “KEEPS FOR THEMSELVES” A LOT OF TOKENS TO IMPLEMENT AN EXCHANGE SOFTWARE SOLUTION THAT PROTECTS FROM VOLATILITY. AND CONSIDERING THE EXAMPLE OF BITCOIN AND OTHER CRYPTOCURRENCIES, THE RATE FLUCTUATES STRONGLY DURING THE DAY, NOT TO TALK ABOUT A LONGER TIME PERIOD.”

Of course, it’s easy to make a mistake in this matter, so don’t believe any forecasts. Trust only verified information published on official resources.

Problem solving

Using cryptocurrencies should be as simple as exchanging information, and blockchain technology is ideal for this task. In order for a cryptocurrency to reach the mass consumer, it must satisfy the following conditions:

Speed and scalability to process millions of transactions per second and serve hundreds of millions of active users and applications.
Usability - intuitive user interfaces that will allow the average consumer to easily buy, store and transfer currency, as well as use decentralized applications.
An initial user base is needed to serve as the “foundation” or starting point for the growth of a new ecosystem in order for that ecosystem to grow at a rapid pace and ultimately be adopted en masse by hundreds of millions of consumers.

Telegram has a unique opportunity to launch the world's first cryptocurrency for the mass market, as it meets all the above requirements.

Telegram will use its expertise in encrypted distributed data storage to create TON, a fast and scalable blockchain architecture. TON can be considered as a decentralized supercomputer and a new payment system. By combining minimal transaction times with maximum security, TON could become a VISA/Mastercard alternative for the new decentralized economy. The Telegram team draws on its 10 years of experience creating convenient user interfaces for millions of users, so the TON wallet integrated into Telegram applications will become the most popular and easy-to-use cryptocurrency wallet in the world . Telegram will leverage its existing ecosystem of communities, developers, publishers and merchants to drive demand and value for the TON GRAM cryptocurrency. An entirely new economic marketplace will emerge, offering goods and services in exchange for cryptocurrency—something similar to WeChat with its built-in payments, but without being limited to a one-stop shop.

Prospects

Right now, Telegram is about to launch the largest and multi-billion dollar ICO project, which has a huge market value and will be working on its own blockchain technology and is expected to have a TON token. It will also be announced about the creation of an official wallet for Telegram, which will be available for users of iOS, Android, Mac, Window, Blackberry, so Telegram or TON token will receive a huge number of investors, who are expected to influence the price and see continuous growth of the market capitalization. Considering all this factor, the developers plan to launch one of the most promising projects in the history of cryptocurrencies.

What will come of this in the end? All that remains is to wait to find out the answer.

Sources:

https://jiomobilephone1500.com/

https://coinpedia.org/

https://cryptoticker.io/

Editor: BlockChainWiki Team

A Brief History of Telegram

Telegram was founded by libertarians in 2013 to freely communicate and preserve free speech through encryption. The project was “non-profit” and remains so today: independent and financed from internal funds of the company and founder Pavel Durov. Like Wikipedia, which has been a role model for many years, Telegram's founders chose the .org domain to emphasize its non-profit status.

The architecture of the Telegram messenger initially included complete decentralization, and clusters of servers located on different continents and under different jurisdictions were used to store and transmit encrypted data.

Speed, encryption and independence attracted millions of users within months of the project's launch in 2013. Telegram continued to evolve, releasing an average of 12 updates per year. By February 2016, Telegram had already reached 100 million monthly active users, who sent 15 billion messages daily.

In October 2022, the Telegram base already had 170 million active users, and the number of messages reached 70 billion per day. About 500,000 people used the messenger daily. In March 2022, as expected, the number of users reached 200 million; it is these users who can provide the “foundation” for the launch of a new cryptocurrency and its entry into the mass consumer market.

Telegram Open Network (TON)

Since existing blockchain platforms have a number of disadvantages and limitations, the co-founder and brother of the founder of the Telegram messenger, Nikolay Durov, found a new solution to meet the speed and scalability requirements of the new blockchain platform.

As a result of his research work, a new concept, Telegram Open Network, was developed - a fast, secure and scalable blockchain platform.

TON Blockchain

The TON platform is based on a scalable and flexible architecture, which consists of a main blockchain and up to 2ˆ92 secondary blockchains. Below are some of the benefits that allow the TON blockchain to process millions of transactions per second.

Infinite Scalability To achieve infinite scalability, the main TON blockchain is divided into many secondary blockchains. TON can automatically split and merge blockchains to balance the load on a section of the network. This means that new blocks will always be generated quickly, and the absence of long queues will reduce transaction costs.

Instant Hypercube Routing uses intelligent routing engines to provide high-speed transaction processing regardless of system size. The time required to transfer information between TON blockchains increases logarithmically with their number, so scaling to millions of copies of blockchains will allow them all to communicate at maximum speed.
Proof-of-Stake method The TON blockchain uses a method based on the Proof-of-Stake system, in which processing nodes (the so-called “validators”) guarantee their reliability with deposits and solve the so-called “Byzantine generals problem” (from cryptology). This allows TON to concentrate the computing power of its nodes on transaction processing and smart contracts, which further increases speed and efficiency.
2-D distributed TON registers can “grow” new valid blocks on top of erroneous blocks in order to avoid network forks (forks). This self-healing mechanism saves resources and ensures that valid transactions are not discarded due to possible errors.

Technology

In addition to the main one - the master chain - up to 2^32 (or up to 2^92 - the developers have not yet decided which beautiful number is best to draw) side chains, or “workchains,” can operate in the ecosystem. Each of them can set their own address formats or use different virtual machines for smart contracts. However, they can interact using the same basic rules.

Most traditional blockchains are still loosely coupled, and attempts to bridge between them are bad for both performance and decentralization. The design of TON - at least according to the TON team - effectively combines all known blockchains into a single decentralized network.

TON platform

TON is a multi-blockchain network in which a special network protocol, TON P2P Network, will be used to access blockchains. The following are services that are planned to be released after the implementation of the TON Blockchain, which will further increase the potential use of the TON infrastructure.

TON Storage This is a distributed file storage technology, available through the TON P2P Network protocol - storage of arbitrary files with access to them using smart contracts. This service will not only allow you to store files (for example, like Dropbox), but will also open up new opportunities for using more complex decentralized applications that need to store large amounts of data, such as Youtube or Telegram.
TON Proxy This is a network proxy server used to hide the IDs and IP addresses of TON nodes. Similar to I2P (Invisible Internet Project), this component can be used to create decentralized VPN services and TOR alternatives. Based on the TON Proxy blockchain, it will be able to provide additional anonymity and confidentiality on the Internet. Combined with the TON P2P network and TON DNS, TON Proxy can securely provide access to any information, even those protected from censorship.
TON Services This is a platform for third-party services and developers, which allows the use of user-friendly interfaces when creating decentralized applications and smart contracts, as well as for decentralized browsing on the Internet.
TON DNS This is a service for assigning human-readable names to accounts, smart contracts, services and network nodes in the TON network. Thanks to TON DNS, accessing decentralized services will be similar to browsing a website on the Internet.
TON Payments This is a platform for micropayments and a network of micropayment channels. This platform can be used for instant payments between users, bots and other services. Safeguards built into the system ensure that these transfers are safe.

All of these services can be integrated with third-party messaging and social media apps, bridging the centralized and decentralized worlds.

Integration of TON with Telegram messenger

Integration of TON with the Telegram messenger will make the GRAM cryptocurrency accessible to millions of people. Using its example, Telegram will not only demonstrate all the capabilities of TON, but will also add unique features to the TON platform, using the messenger’s massive user base and developed ecosystem.

Light wallet

The TON architecture supports lightweight clients that can run on mobile devices without using significant resources. The TON Light Wallet will be built into Telegram applications, allowing millions of users to safely store their funds on the TON blockchain platform. To access the wallet, encryption keys will be used, which will be stored only on the side of the wallet owner.

Mobile and desktop Telegram applications with built-in wallets will be duplicated in TON, which will ensure secure transfer of the GRAM cryptocurrency on the TON blockchain and interaction with TON smart contracts and applications. Telegram will provide simplified interfaces for transferring funds to other users and paying for purchases in TON.

The Telegram TON Light Wallet integrated into the messenger will instantly become the most popular cryptocurrency wallet in the world and the easiest to use.

TON coins will be called “Grams” and will be identified by a triangular TON symbol or a “gem” emoji symbol. Gram will serve as the main currency for the economy in Telegram applications, and, like any other cryptocurrency, will be available for external use.

External secure identifiers

Statistics on the use of official ICO groups in different messengers. According to Tokenmarket.net statistics for October 2022.

According to Tokenmarket, 84% of projects based on blockchain technologies have active community support through channels, groups and chats in the Telegram messenger. This is more than all other instant messengers combined. According to Forbes and other media outlets, Telegram has been called "the most popular messenger in the cryptocurrency world" and "the most used in the cryptocurrency world, similar to the popularity of Snapchat among teenagers."

Since most participants in the new digital economy are already Telegram users, it will be necessary to create secure universal identifiers for them. After passing the KYC-AML identification procedure once (similar identification is carried out in financial markets to establish the identity of clients and protect against criminal activity), the user will receive a virtual passport to enter third-party services that also require personal identification. This eliminates possible problems and loss of time for those who deal with cryptocurrency assets.

All personal data (documents, scanned copies of passports) will be transferred using end-to-end encryption. The key will be known only to the owner, so even the distributed servers of Telegram (and later the TON blockchain) will not have access to the original information, since they will only store an encrypted hash of the data. Third parties will be able to add additional checks to virtual passports. All this will be possible thanks to the Telegram Passport service.

Ecosystem

The existing Telegram ecosystem will offer simple ways to purchase TON Grams coins and use them easily, thereby increasing the demand and value of the cryptocurrency.

Bot platform As of October 2017, more than 800,000 unique bots are regularly used by 52 million Telegram users. These bots can already accept credit card payments from users in 200 countries through 8 vendor gateways connected to the payment platform. In the future, by using their secure IDs in combination with bots that accept credit cards, Telegram users will be able to quickly and securely buy and exchange cryptocurrency without legal hassles. Telegram will provide a single entry point for users wanting to connect to bots that offer exchange services, effectively creating a competitive market.
Groups and Channels The Telegram ecosystem includes millions of public group chats supporting up to 100,000 concurrent users and broadcast channels, the largest of which have several million subscribers. Telegram's public channels generate over 30 billion views from 80 million monthly users. Owners of large channels are now trying to monetize them on their own by advertising or promoting other channels and groups. However, currently they do not have the necessary tools to formalize financial relationships with advertisers. To remedy this, Telegram will launch an internal exchange platform based on TON, where parties interested in promotion or advertising can easily contact channel owners and negotiate prices in a transparent and fully automated way. All transactions will be made in the Grams cryptocurrency on a pay-per-view or pay-per-click basis, with all the necessary statistics and guarantees provided to all parties to the transaction.
Digital Content and Real Products Bots, channels and groups provide a ready market for paid content and subscription-based services. Users will be able to support publishers and content creators by making donations or paying for subscriptions to paid services. Bots can act as virtual storefronts and accept orders for the supply of real goods. Telegram applications will supply the TON market with a wide range of goods and services that can be paid for with GRAMS coins.
Gateway to decentralized services A database for searching for decentralized services will be available in Telegram. These are lists of the most popular applications, as well as recommendations based on user choice history. Thanks to this, Telegram will become a store for blockchain applications - similar to how Google Play and the App Store currently work for regular centralized applications.

Using TON as a cryptocurrency

In addition to payments for digital and real goods offered by merchants in the Telegram ecosystem and other projects integrated with TON, GRAMS coins will also be used as:

Commission (“gas”) paid to TON nodes (“validators”) for processing transactions and smart contracts;
Payment to validators for “work” - checking transactions and generating new blocks and coins;
Validator capital in exchange for shares of his reward;
Participation in voting on the need to change the network and protocol parameters;
Payment for services provided by applications created on the platform (TON Services);
Payment for secure decentralized data storage (TON Storage);
Payment for registration of blockchain-based domain names (TON DNS) and hosting of TON websites (TON WWW);
Payment for hiding identifiers and IP addresses (TON Proxy);
Payment for bypassing censorship restrictions that may be set by local providers (TON Proxy).

All these services can be free for users, as application owners can choose other types of monetization:

service commission;
shareware development;
advertising in applications.

Shard blocks

Each shard block must contain a certain mandatory set of data, the so-called. indivisible part. It includes:

The hash of the previous block and possibly the hashes of the parents in the event of a shardchain merger.
Validator signatures for already accepted blocks.
The number of the last known masterchain block.
Hashes of the initial and final state of the shard for this block.
An outgoing message queue in the form of a list of messages sent to other shards.

Accountchain

The account chain is the initial level of the TON blockchain. Each account ID is a 256-bit key + workchain ID. For example, the smart contract address will look like this:

1:81525a3672b55678d4139b993b542c5c9735ac41b653d963a42855c9834b6921a4.

And the user account address is like this:

Ef+BVndfdQ45nUdlsfsmv68KBHGSgBJsfsv58dG2SE4oPMgs4.

The account itself receives and accepts messages (of course, these are not messages from Telegram). They can contain GRAM tokens, be calls to smart contracts, represent any other data, etc.

All messages are processed only when they are delivered to the desired shard. At the same time, they can move freely through intermediate shards. Messages can also come from outside the TON blockchain, i.e. be “messages from nowhere.”

Account

Any account is a smart contract, possibly even with empty code. Each account pays a fee for storing data, i.e. its balance decreases over time.

The account contains information about the balance of GRAM tokens, the contract code or its hash, the time spent on the network, starting from the appearance of the root cell, statistics on the use of the data storage (for example, by the time of the last payment for storage), and a formal description of the interface.

TON roadmap

3rd quarter 2013 — Launch of the Telegram messenger and the Telegram API platform
2nd quarter 2015 — Launch of the bot platform Telegram Bot API
2nd quarter 2022 — Launch of the Telegram Payments payment platform
1st quarter 2022 — Launch of the Telegram External Secure ID authorization system
2nd quarter 2022 — Test launch of the minimal TON network
3rd quarter 2022 — Testing and auditing the security of the TON network
4th quarter 2022 — Launch of the working version of TON
4th quarter 2022 — Launch of the Telegram TON Wallet wallet
1st quarter 2022 — Creation of an economy based on TON in Telegram
2nd quarter 2022 — Launch of TON Services, TON Storage and TON Proxy

The Telegram team will also continue to release monthly updates to the messenger itself and products not related to TON.

Where to store

The official wallet is available in versions for Linux, Windows, MacOs, Android, iOS. There is even a web version and a Chrome extension.

But you should be careful - for example, one that recently appeared on Google Play was rated a C, but it did not gain popularity. The reason is the obvious dampness of the product: the wallet may not be created, may not open, or may not be transferred to another phone. In general, there is no need to rush to invest all your savings.

By the way, here Rulon and Enot now call themselves J&B Investments Group.

Token distribution

The total supply of native TON tokens (Grams) will be 5 billion.

To raise the funds needed to create TON, Telegram is launching a token sale in the first quarter of 2022. The token sale will most likely use a private ICO or SAFT fundraising model. Exchange for TON tokens (Grams) will take place at a 1:1 rate after the deployment of the TON blockchain in the 4th quarter of 2022.

After the launch of TON, annual inflation is projected at 2%. This is due to the need to pay validators for maintaining the functioning of the TON network.

4% of coins (200 million Grams) will be reserved for the development team with a 4-year vesting period. During the initial phase of active development of TON, at least 52% of all coins will be kept in the TON reserve to protect the cryptocurrency from speculative activities and to maintain the flexibility of the cryptocurrency in the early stages of the network. The remaining 44% of coins (2.2 billion Grams) will be sold using the following formula: Pn: = 0.1 × (1 + 10^-9)^n USD

The price of the first token issued will be approximately $0.1, and each subsequent token will be worth one billionth of a dollar more than the previous one. As a result, the additional stock coming from the TON reserve will always be more expensive than the price paid by any of the buyers previously. This scheme should allow the market to provide a fair price and volume for the sale of tokens.

GRAM token price chart during the pre-sale period

The price of the TON token during the pre-sale period will be determined as average or higher, depending on the vesting period and the purchase volume.

Use of funds

Funds raised in the closed ICO will be used to develop the TON network and support the growth of the Telegram ecosystem.

TON funds distribution schedule

More than 80% of the funds raised from the ICO will be spent on equipment, increasing bandwidth, renting dedicated servers and user identification costs. The rest will be used for salaries, office rent, legal and consulting services.

Telegram planned budget

Telegram's annual budget in 2022 was $70 million, of which $62 million was spent on equipment, increasing bandwidth, renting servers in data centers and identifying users. Expenditures for the next 3 years are projected to be $400 million (approximately $100 million in 2022, $130 million in 2022, and $170 million in 2022). The total expenses are about 620 million US dollars, which Telegram will use to attract new users, which will allow the projected growth of active users of the messenger to reach 1 billion by January 1, 2022.

Control

The founders of Telegram will be responsible for the effective use of funds received as a result of the sale of tokens from the TON reserve. Over time, all responsibilities associated with TON and its reserve will be transferred to the non-profit organization TON Foundation.

By 2022, the TON architecture will be fully implemented and deployed. After this, TON will remove the word “Telegram” from its name and will be renamed “The Open Network”.

From now on, the continuous evolution of the TON blockchain will be supported by the TON Foundation.

Telegram will serve as the launch pad for TON, ensuring its technological superiority and adoption by the masses, but the future of TON lies in the hands of the global open source community.

Where can I buy

So far, the token is supported by centralized EXMO and Mercuryo. Coins can also be wrapped in BEP and ERC formats for use in the Binance Smart Chain and Ethereum ecosystems. Uniswap, PancakeSwap and 1inch offer to exchange them.

An alternative is direct exchange with users of the Telegram messenger. For this, TON has a Crypto Bot.

See the official list of exchanges here.

Team

The Telegram team consists of 15 world-class developers who were selected from thousands of applicants over the past ten years. Each of the team members has won the best programming competitions in the world or taken first place in one of the nationwide multi-level programming competitions held by the founder of Telegram.

Members of the Core Team (core development team) have ten years of experience in creating scalable projects for tens of millions of users. Before creating Telegram, they already had experience creating the largest European social network with more than 100 million active users, which continues to occupy a leading position in local markets.

The members of the Backend Team (the development team responsible for the software part) consists of winners of world-class programming competitions, specializing in creating data storage security systems on distributed server infrastructures. All network, cryptographic and software systems for working with databases, running on thousands of Telegram servers, are configured by these developers.