Telegram’s ambitions to launch its own TON blockchain platform is officially over.
Cloud-based instant messaging service Telegram is done with its blockchain platform Telegram Open Network (TON) idea. As the company’s CEO announced yesterday, Telegram is not going to proceed with the project due to the regulatory issues.
According to CEO and founder Pavel Durov’s announcement this Tuesday, Telegram is abandoning the TON blockchain platform after a battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC):
Today is a sad day for us here at Telegram. We are announcing the discontinuation of our blockchain project.
Telegram’s TON blockchain supposed to be a next-generation blockchain platform issued together with its cryptocurrency Gram. As stated in the announcement, TON was designed to share the principles of decentralization pioneered by Bitcoin and Ethereum, however superior to them in speed and scalability. Further ambition was to revolutionize the way of storing and transferring both funs and information.
Telegram blames the US court
As the main reason for stepping back from the TON project, Telegram named the US SEC’s decision to prohibit the company from issuing its Gram tokens. Furthermore, Durov claimed the court baned distributing tokens not only on the American soil but worldwide:
Perhaps even more paradoxically, the US court declared that Grams couldn't be distributed not only in the United States, but globally. Why? Because, it said, a US citizen might find some way of accessing the TON platform after it launched.
The company announced its TON blockchain and cryptocurrency Gram back in 2017. However, the messaging giant of more than 400 million users, struggled with the US regulatory due to the SEC’s accusations of selling tokens as unregistered securities and violating the federal law.
Due to the legal battles, the launch of Telegram’s TON blockchain was postponed several times. The last scheduled launch supposed to be April 30, however, the company failed to meet the deadlines. In the meantime, the messaging service giant has always been clear about its politics to refund the investors in case of TON launching failure.
Yet the company distributed letters to its American investors earlier this month, claiming that Telegram will return 72% of their original investments. The messaging service provider, however, offered the alternative option to get a 110% refund of investments as a token of gratitude. Unfortunately, the plans were eliminated by the American regulatory.
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