Representatives of the TON blockchain platform told investors what stage of development the project is at. Experts say that the Telegram report looks as if the company "is going to create its own Internet." In September, the company of Pavel Durov Telegram sent letters to investors, informing them about the Telegram Open Network platform (TON) development stage, Russian media Vedomosti reports.
According to representatives of the project, it is ready by 70%, and before the end of autumn, it will be launched in the test mode. At the moment, the main component of TON is a Virtual Machine, that is a necessary smart contracts operation that has been developed by 95%. The tools for it are 50% ready, while the protocols for creating a network that will transmit requests for transactions and new blocks are only at 10%. Also, representatives of Telegram said that they are working on the creation of mechanisms for the production of new units and their validation.
According to a newspaper source familiar with the development of TON, the written part of the system is a new, almost completely decentralized way of exchanging data. Over these protocols, the blockchain itself will be created, and after this TON will be ready for launch, he points out.
The most questionable part is the high readiness of the first component - TVM, since the main area of expertise of the Telegram team is not related to “virtual machines,” Kirill Ivkushkin, chief architect at insolar.io, the company-developer of decentralized business applications, told Vedomosti. In his opinion, the white paper TON “virtual machine” was not described in details, and the functionality may be simpler in the end than, for example, the Ethereum system — this will not allow creating complex applications on it.
TON developers have written many protocols from scratch, the Telegram report looks like an instant messenger is going to create its own Internet, told Vedomosti Alexey Blagirev R3 banking blockchain platform development manager in the Commonwealth of Independent States. However, at the blockchain testing stage, developers may face unforeseen difficulties and problems with network scalability, he warns.
Information about the launch of the Telegram Open Network project appeared for the first time at the end of 2017. The company raised more than $1.7 billion during the closed ICO round, in which 200 investors participated. Back then the Telegram team promised that TON would process transactions faster than the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains and would be able to compete on the speed of payments with Visa and Mastercard. According to the developers, the platform will support the ability to conduct millions of transactions per second.
In July, Telegram Passport was announced - the first stage of TON implementation. Thanks to Telegram Passport, users will be able to upload their documents in order to then log in an unlimited number of times on various websites and services that require identity verification. These data will later be moved to a single distribution cloud, and their owners will be able to use the Gram cryptocurrency, which will become a means of payment within TON.
However, the company had to fight for its cryptocurrency. In mid-May, Telegram filed a trademark lawsuit against the American company Lantah LLC, which also intended to create a cryptocurrency called Gram.
Durov’s company filed an application to register the trademark to the European Union Intellectual Property Office in late April. However, later Lantah LLC managed to challenge it.
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