The TON blockchain created by Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov is promising big things will happen this year, setting itself a goal that no other blockchain has yet been able to achieve – it’s aiming for nothing less than mass adoption.
Nikolai Durov and Durov created TON back in 2017. It’s one of the most ambitious blockchain projects of all and all the more so when we consider its tumultuous past. Designed to surpass Ethereum and Bitcoin in speed, TON raised nearly $1.7 billion through its initial coin offering.
However, things quickly unraveled for Telegram when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stepped in to halt the sale in October 2019, claiming that TON’s GRAM tokens were unregistered securities. Telegram eventually decided to end the TON project and handed over its work to the open-source community.
Telegram had abandoned the TON project and very little information was made about it in the months that followed. The TON project had in fact become one among a growing list of neglected blockchains.
That all changed last month though, when Durov suddenly announced on Telegram the TON project is not only still “alive” but moreover, “evolving” fast. TON immediately followed up by announcing a partnership agreement with Donate. This will allow users to donate and purchase Toncoin subscriptions.
Then came this week’s promise from TON:
“After four years of blood, sweat, tears, and active development from some of the most brilliant engineering talent on the globe, we’re finally at the cusp of something great,”Announcement by the TON Community “Something that has eluded all others, even as they reach untold heights, successes, and trillion-dollar valuations. Mass adoption.”
It’s a bold promise but it’s one TON has the means to live up to, as 2022 looks to be a breakout year for the project that aims to unite all other blockchains into a single, decentralized network with blazing fast transaction speeds and low costs.
TON is building web3, with elements including instant payments, decentralized storage, DNS, anonymity, DNS and support for other decentralized services. TON launched The Open Network in early 2013, a highly scalable and stable multi-blockchain capable of processing millions of transactions per minute. TON also finished work on the TON-ETH bridge. This allows Toncoins and Ethereum to easily be moved back and forth. As demonstrated by Donate’s partnership, TON payments also became possible in the fourth quarter of 2017. This is yet another milestone.
The roadmap for 2022 doesn’t let up, and by the time the year is out TON will have everything it needs to support web3. Q1 will bring TON’s DNS service to life. It assigns humans-readable names for accounts, smart contract services, and network nodes to their blockchain. The DNS service makes browsing the internet as simple as possible. Launch of the TON Proxy and TON DeFi as well as the TON Developers Program will be other significant milestones.
With those developments out the way, TON’s final tasks will be to complete its distributed file-storage system Ton Storage, and launch its much-vaunted TON Workchains that promise to bridge all existing blockchains into one giant, unified decentralized network.
Getting everything in place is one thing – achieving its goal of mass adoption will be quite another. TON does have all the ingredients to make this happen. With true decentralization and fast, low-cost transactions, and an intuitive interface, TON makes it easy for everyone to purchase, sell, and transfer assets efficiently and quickly. With the DeFi apps, financial freedom can finally be achieved.
Now, it’s no longer a question of whether or not TON can live up to its promise. The question now is whether or not the world is truly ready for a fair and unprejudiced financial system that’s free from censorship and accessible to all?
The future will be interesting, but 2022 could prove to be a great year for TON.