Blockchain projects used to be very popular a few years ago. Almost every company decided to try their luck on crowdfunding. Each sphere of our daily life was tokenized at some point: music, traveling, medicine, security, banking, communication…

Yet, time goes by and most of those projects die.

And some of them — never start.

TON: What We Expected?

The rumors about an ICO appeared somewhere in the middle of 2018. They could be found all over across the Internet that time. The Founders of TON were the Durov brothers: Nikolai and Pavel. You might know Pavel Durov as a Co-founder, CEO, Product Manager at Telegram and VK (Russian analog of Facebook).

Like every ICO, this one had its own Whitepaper where all the possible information was gathered. And for a long time, it was the only proof of this crowdfunding.

“Launching in 2018, this cryptocurrency will be based on multi-blockchain Proof-of-Stake system TON (Telegram Open Network, after 2021 The Open Network) designed to host a new generation of cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications,” — said the document.

Sound interesting? Yep.

What is Supposed to be Special About TON?

As the Whitepaper said, the potential of existing cryptocurrencies was lack enough to attract the mass consumer:

“As a result, no cryptocurrency or decentralized platform has gone truly mainstream, and centralized solutions continue to dominate the market.”

And Telegram wanted to fix it. Blockchain technology supposed to offer the ideal foundation to reach mainstream adoption in 3 trends:

Speed and scalability;

Intuitive user interfaces;

An engaged user base.

Here are the main points which every ICO should contain:

Token Price : 1 GRAM = 0.10000 USD

: 1 GRAM = 0.10000 USD Total Tokens Supply : 5,000,000,000

: 5,000,000,000 Available for Token Sale: 44%

Later on we faced the dates too: the crowdsale should have started on 15 October 2018 and end on 15 February 2018.

Yet, something went wrong:

So Why the Hell Telegram Needed an ICO?

IMO, Telegram had good enough chances to make its way in the ICO world:

The app is well-known and popular all around the world;

A lot of people use it and might not want to change it for any other messenger;

It has a number of 5-star reviews on different platforms.

The Devs wanted to tokenize the project but the instability of the market caused some troubles and changed the plans. Who would like to participate in the ICO when the whole market is going down? Not me. Yet, if you disagree, fill free to share your opinion in the comments below.

Messenger App: Telegram as It Is

Telegram was launched in 2013 by Nikolai and Pavel Durov. Previously the brothers founded the Russian social network VK, they left VK when it was taken over by the Mail.ru Group. The Telegram team is currently based in Dubai.

Telegram provides fast and secure instant messaging and synchronized across all your possible devices. As Wikipedia says, in October 2013, Telegram had 100,000 daily active users. And after almost 6 years, in March 2018, Telegram reached 200 million monthly active users.

Here are some main things I like about this app:

Group Chat: up to 100,000 members.

Secret chats: when messages are sent with client-to-client encryption.

Channels: the ability for broadcasting messages to an unlimited number of subscribers.

Bots: since June 2015, Telegram launched a special platform to create bots.

Live locations: since October 2017, users can share their live location for either 15 minutes, 1 hour or 8 hours.

Yet, I find Telegram good enough even without some extra promotions like ICO. We already have this app from the Durov brothers and can use it free and worldwide. Just download and test it yourself: you won’t be disappointed.

You’re welcome to share your opinion on Telegram in the comment section below.