Everyone wants to jump on board the ICO bandwagon, as this seems like the fastest and easiest way to raise billions or millions of dollars. A recently leaked document shows encrypted messaging service Telegram plans to raise the largest ICO ever. Telegram aims to raise $2 billion in funds.
Telegram’s History
Telegram, according to its white paper, was founded by libertarians in 2013 to protect freedom through encryption. Project has not-for-profit goals, and is independent and self funded. Telegram, like Wikipedia which has served as a model to its founders for many years, has selected.org for its domain name in order to highlight the non-commercial nature of Telegram. Telegram’s physical infrastructure reflects the founders’ beliefs in decentralization. Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure of servers to sync encrypted data between multiple clusters of independent servers located on different continents.
After the launch of Telegram in 2013, millions of people were attracted by its combination of independence, speed and encryption. Telegram continued to evolve with 12 major upgrades on average per year. In February 2016, the service had reached 100 million active monthly users, and it was sending 15 billion daily messages.
Telegram had 170,000,000 monthly users in October 2017. They sent 70 billion daily messages. Telegram adds at least 500,000 users every day. If the current rate of growth continues, Telegram is likely to reach 200 million users per month in Q1 2018. This critical mass of users will help to drive cryptocurrency adoption.
Telegram Open Network
Telegram is of the opinion that the current cryptocurrency structure lacks the necessary qualities to appeal to mass consumers. Their current architecture is the main problem, with a maximum of 7 transactions per seconds for Bitcoin and 15 for Ethereum. This leads to slower speeds and increased transaction costs. Newcomers in the crypto-world are often confused by trying to store, send and buy their coins.
Telegram says that for a cryptocurrency to be adopted by the mainstream, it — as well as its blockchain and ecosystem design — must:
– Scalability and speed allows millions of transactions to be processed per second, and accommodates hundreds of millions active users.
User interfaces that are intuitive allow users to buy, transfer, store and use apps decentralized in an easy way.
A large user community is necessary to allow the ecosystem’s growth and adoption by millions of users.
Telegram plans to leverage its experience in encrypted distributed storage in order to build TON, a fast and naturally scalable multi blockchain architecture.
Telegram Team, with its 10 years of experience building interfaces that are user-friendly for millions, will create lightweight wallets, exchanges and identification services to allow users to easily get started in cryptocurrency.
Blockchain technology is not able to bring cryptocurrencies into the mainstream. Telegram co-founder Nikolai Durov created the Telegram Open Network in order to achieve the required speed and scale for mass adoption.
The platform is based upon the TON Blockchain, a scalable blockchain with up to 92 of accompanying chains. This is a list of the most significant changes which will allow Ton Blockchain to process millions per second.
Infinite Shading Paradigm– Blockchain contains support for shattering, which means that it can be split up or merged to adapt changes as they occur. The result will be a rapid generation of blocks, avoiding any slowdowns and keeping transaction costs low.
Instant hypercube routing – To make sure that a transaction is fast between two blockchains, TON will be using smart routing mechanisms. The amount of time it takes to send information between TON chains grows exponentially with the number. Scaling to millions of chains allows them to all communicate quickly.
Proof of Stake– The platform is built on a Proof of Stake approach, where processing nodes place stakes in order to ensure their reliability and achieve consensus using a variation of the Byzantine fault-tolerant protocol. This allows TON’s nodes to concentrate their computing power on smart contracts and transactions, increasing efficiency.
2-D distributed ledgers-TON can “grow” new blocks over any incorrect blocks to prevent unnecessary forks. The self-healing system saves time and resources, while ensuring that no valid transaction is thrown out due to an unrelated error.
TON Platform
TON is a multi blockchain project and requires additional components in order to maximize the use of its infrastructure. Telegram will release the following features after the launch of TON Blockchain:
Storage for large files or data such as YouTube and Telegram.
– Proxy to mask the IP addresses and identities of nodes.
– Services, enables decentralized applications and browsing by third parties.
– DNS: Service to name accounts, smart contract, services, and nodes.
– Payments, a platform for making micropayments as well as a network of micropayment channels.
Telegram Messenger integration with TON
Millions of people can now easily access cryptocurrencies by integrating Telegram Messenger into the TON platform. This allows TON to leverage the large Telegram user base.
Light wallet
The Telegram app will include a TON wallet, allowing millions of users the ability to safely store coins on the TON Blockchain. The apps are also TON clients and will ensure safe transactions within the TON Blockchain and provide access to apps and smart contracts.
TON Light wallet is expected to become instantly the most popular wallet in the world. Grams will be the coin used to make payments in TON World.
External secure IDs
Telegram is launching a virtual ID, or universal ID. Telegram is already used by many major crypto players. After verifying AML & KYC on Telegram, users will receive a virtual ID that allows them to access services that need user verification. The key to encrypting private data is known only to the owner. These virtual passports will allow third parties to verify them further.
Ecosystem
Telegram has a well-established ecosystem that will make it easy to buy Grams, and then have them spent on goods and services. This will increase the value and demand of the coin. Take a look.
Bot Platform
Telegram has more than 800.000 bots that are used by its 52 million users. Telegram Payment Platform connects bots with eight service providers to enable them to accept payments by credit cards from users across 200 countries. Telegram users are able to use their virtual passports in order to legally and easily trade cryptocurrency assets. Users can connect to bots offering exchange services and create a competitive marketplace.
Channels and Groups
The ecosystem is made up of over 80 million public group chats, channels, and millions of groups, which generates more than 30 billion views per month. Parties interested in advertising other channels can negotiate and pay in Grams per view or click, and all the statistics and guarantees will be provided.
Physical Goods and Digital Content
Bots, groups, channels and other forms of social media provide an easy market for subscription-based services and paid content. By making donations, or by paying for access to exclusive content, users will have the opportunity to help publishers and creators. The bots will act as virtual stores and take orders to deliver physical products. Telegram’s in-app market will provide TON users with a variety of products and services.
Gateway to Decentralized Service
The users will have the option to search for the decentralized applications, and they can also see the top apps in the app store. They’ll be given recommendations based on their history. The app store will look similar to Google Play.
The TON Cryptocurrency
The Gram will not only be used in the TON economy but also as
– Payment to TON Nodes for the processing of transactions and Smart Contracts;
Validators pay stakes for the generation of new blocks and coins.
Payment of capital to validators as a part of the reward.
To vote on changes to the protocol
Payment of TON Services
– Payment for TON Storage
– Payment for DNS and WWW;
– Payment for TON proxy.
Road Map
Telegram will announce the launch date of Telegram External Secure ID during the first quarter 2018. This is followed by the launch date of the Minimal viable test network of TON. The launch of the light wallet will be at the end of 2018.
Token Distribution
The sale of tokens is planned for the first quarter in 2018 to help raise the funds required to realise the TON.
There will be 5 billion native TON (Grams).
In their whitepaper, they state that four percent (200,000,000 Grams) of the total supply will be held for the team’s development with a vesting period of 4 years. During the first stage of active TON Development, the TON Reserve will retain at least 52% of the total supply to prevent speculative trades and maintain flexibility in the early stages.
Each token sold after that will cost one billionth more than its predecessor. The TON Reserve’s additional supply will be always more expensive than any existing buyer. The market should be able to determine the right price and the volume of the token sales. The average token price or even higher is the maximum that can be charged to a large group of institutional investors in exchange for a fiat-currency. This depends on vesting periods and transaction volume.
Fund distribution
The funds raised by the Telegram ICO are used to develop Telegram, TON, and support ongoing costs for ecosystem growth. Over 80 percent will go towards equipment, bandwidth costs, colocation and verification of users. Rest of funds will go to salaries, office costs, legal services, and colocation.
Team behind TON
If you want to be a part of TON, then it is important that you win the top programming competitions in the world or the national multi-level coding contests organized by Telegram’s founder. Each of our current team members has done this.
The core team has ten years’ experience building projects that scale for millions of users. They created VK before building Telegram. It is the biggest social network in Europe with over 100 million users.
This team is highly skilled in the development of safe engines for data storage. This team custom-built all the software that is deployed on thousands of Telegram servers.
Nikolai Durov, Dr. Nikolai Durov, and Pavel Durov are the founders of TON. The following biographies can be found in the whitepaper.
Dr. Nikolai Durov
Phd (Bonn University), Phd (Saint-Petersburg State University)
From 2013 to present: co-founder, chief technology officer, architect, lead C/C++ engineer at Telegram. Built MTProto’s and Telegram’s distributed data storage engine;
From 2006 to 2013, I was a co-founder at VK, as well as CTO, architect, and lead C/C++ engineer. Built networking and data storage software.
Awards:
– Absolute World Champion (2000,2001) – one of only ten individuals in history who have won the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest two times;
Gold Medals at International Mathematical Olympiads (1996), 1997 and 1998;
– Medals of Gold and Silver in International Olympiads in Informatics (1996), 1997, 1998).
Nikolai is both a world class programmer and an internationally renowned mathematician, all in one. Nikolai was able to solve cubic equations at the age of 8 years old. At age 9, he began coding, and at 13 he had built a complete operating system in x86 Assembly Language for Intel 80386 Microprocessors. Nikolay, then 11 years old, spent the summers without a computer in Siberia, and filled pages of x86 assembly language, writing programs like a Forth Interpreter. He scaled VK, and later Telegram, up to millions of users per day as a distributed system guru and CTO. Nikolai began to be interested in Bitcoin, and other related technologies, around 2014. In TON’s Technical White Paper he summed up his research into these topics and presented a novel architecture of scalable, decentralized ledgers.
Pavel Durov
– 2013-present: Co-founder, CEO, Product Manager at Telegram;
VK – Co-founder 2006-2013, CEO Product Manager Lead Developer
Awards:
The Most Promising Northern European Leader Under 30 Years (2014)
World Economic Forum, Young Global Leader (2017).
Pavel gained first international recognition by founding VK. Under his leadership, the social network commanded 70 percent of the market in Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia. This was more than Facebook or any other competitor. Libertarian in his views, Pavel published manifestos that urged the Russian government to decentralize and deregulate the economy. Pavel had to leave Russia and sell VK in 2014 due to a dispute with the Russian government about his users’ freedom of expression and privacy. Pavel began coding when he was 10 years old, and by 11 had already made his first multiplayer strategy game. He created popular communication tools online for his fellow students as a teenager. He coded VK’s first version by himself at 21. Pavel created Telegram in 2013 and began to be interested in cryptocurrency. He spent his $1.5M savings in Bitcoin, which he still holds today.
Last Thoughts
Bloomberg reports that Telegram wants to raise $850 million through a private token sale to major investors this month, and another $1.15 in a public ICO to be held in March.
Gregory Klumov is a managing director of Exante which deals in cryptocurrencies. He says that the demand has been so great, there has already developed a secondary market. Klumov stated that “some western funds who received a pre ICO allocation have already offered to resell as the price for the public ICO will be double the amount.”
Three Russians who manage Russian investor’s money have said that they failed to receive an allocation for Telegram’s Pre-ICO, or they received less than what they had hoped. The private sale offers tokens for more than 50% off the price of the public offering. Investors should keep their tokens after listing them, and hold onto them for up to 18 months.
Facebook has been flooded with ads promoting the pre-sale of Gram Tokens.
Pavel Durov tweeted on Tuesday Jan. 16, warning of possible scams surrounding the TON ICO.
It’s a scam. Be careful.
Pavel Durov (@durov). 15 January 2018
Neither of the Durov Brothers has made a statement in public regarding the TON ICO.
