Pavel Durov Will Launch Telegram TON For Everyone in 2019
January 23, 2019 by Jeff Fawkes
Durov’s team has informed investors that the TON network is 90 percent ready. According to insiders, it will be working by some time in the first half of 2019. Despite those assurances, further delays are anticipated “due to the innovative essence of the development”.
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The Latest Changes to the TON Roadmap
A year ago, Durov’s blockchain project TON (Telegram Open Network) had attracted around $1.7 billion USD from more than a hundred investors. Money flowed from Silicon Valley funds and cashed-up Russians. According to The Bell’s two unnamed sources close to the TON Development Team, a large meeting of investors should happen within the next 30 days.
The Bell studied the most recent newsletter sent to investors. It was acquired by the @Tgram telegram channel dedicated to the new cryptocurrency. The authors of the channel got the document at the beginning of January 2019. It describes the latest changes in the roadmap of the TON GRAM project:
- The team working on TON is ready for a full-scale launch at the beginning of 2019, but there is a possibility of a two-to-three month delay due to the innovative essence of the development;
- TON is 90 percent ready, and some fresh news regarding its progress will arrive in February 2019. Back in September’s newsletter, which was highlighted by Vedomosti, the TON team reported 70 percent project readiness. It also concluded that the test network will run “later this autumn” (it appears that deadline has been shifted);
- The paper promises that the Test network will be opened in late January, but one of the investors has claimed that the Testnet already works;
- A Testnet audit will be held during February to identify any minor bugs in the final code;
- The Mainnet will be opened for public testing in March 2019.
Pavel Durov and Ilya Perekopsky from Telegram Business Development did not respond to The Bell’s request for further information.
Durov Expands Heavily in Silent Mode
It is known that on January 17th, Durov sent a message to investors saying that “2018 was a great year for Telegram, but 2019 will become the most important year in the history of our company.” He had promised to “implement many of the long-awaited changes to the product” and stressed that 2019 would become a time “when Telegram users’ dreams will become a reality”.
The TON team is now learning some of the legal hurdles it faces in more than ten jurisdictions, including a number of Asian countries. TON Issuer Inc. is actively working with cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan, Great Britain, and China. Japan may become the first country Gram begins circulating. One of the interesting features of the network is that all investors will have their money returned if the network is not launched by October 31st, 2019.
Right now, it seems like the project is all-but ready to launch. It had already experienced a delay in development, since the Telegram Wallet was supposed to be working before the end of last year.
One of Telegram’s early investors is QIWI CEO, Sergey Solonin, who pledged $7 million to the development fund. He responded to The Bell’s request for an interview and said that there was no fresh information in his inbox regarding the project, so he cannot confirm or deny anything.
Will you buy some Gram tokens after their public release? What price may Gram reach and why? Share your predictions in the comments section below.
Images by Jeff Fawkes
