Telegram’s TON Community launches free version of TON blockchain

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Telegram raised $1.7 billion in their 2018 ICO. They promised to deliver the Gram tokens by 31st October, 2019 through a legal undertaking. They missed the deadline long ago. The latest deadline to launch TON (Telegram Open Network) blockchain was 30th April, 2020. They couldn’t meet that also. The U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) stopped the Gram project citing illegal activity by the developers and promoters. It was a big mess. Ultimately Telegram offered to refund the investors 72% of their stake as the first option and 110% of their stake as the second option if they cooperated to wait for another year. TON project and Gram ICO was a highly hyped project which miserably failed due to legal issues.

TON Labs was a startup that helped Telegram to run the testnet for their TON blockchain. They along with some other TON developers launched a free version of TON blockchain on 7th May. They arranged a ZOOM video call for the community members and had a question-answer session also. The ZOOM call was live-streamed on YouTube and the genesis block was generated.

TON community ZOOM call recording. If the video doesn't play, click here to view

Is it fork?

The developers declined to call it fork. The original TON blockchain was never launched. They’ve built the blockchain from the Github code repository. So technically it is not a fork. As per the developers, they wanted to create an uncensored network. They have named the blockchain ‘Free TON’ and the tokens are called ‘ton crystals’. Telegram didn’t associate themselves with this community-driven project. They developers also stated that a few exchanges will be acting as validators for the project although there is no news about exchange listing. Free TON blockchain has an operating system called ‘TON OS’. That has been open-sourced too in Github.

“Since we believe in freedom of speech, in information sharing, and in free software, we have decided to give the power back to the community and unanimously proclaim the launch of the Free TON blockchain and the Free TON Crystal (or TON for short) as its native token.” – Freeton website

Great rush to be part of Free TON

Free TON is a POS blockchain. The supply is 5 billion just like the original TON project. As per their press release, 85% tokens will be distributed to their partners and users. It is possible that they’ll airdrop good amount of tokens. Anybody can be part of the user community by registering at freeton.org and signing the declaration of decentralization (DOD) as per them. Till now 1600+ users have already joined their community whereas only a few hours have passed since the launch.

Note: DYOR before joining the community and submitting any information in their website. There is no referral link included in this post. If you like the post, kindly comment and upvote.