Telegram Decides to Shut Down Its TON Blockchain Project After the U.S. Court Order

The much-awaited project in the blockchain space - the Telegram Open Network (TON) - will see no light-of-the-day after a U.S. Court ordered that its native cryptocurrency GRAM is a security.

The Telegram Open Network (TON) which was announced during early 2018 and created a lot of excitement and buzz in the crypto space. Several investors lined-up as Telegram raised a whopping $1.7 billion through the sale of GRAM tokens in a pre-ICO setup.

But after the U.S. court order, Telegram chief Parel Durov announced that he has to completely halt its TON blockchain project and will return investors all the amount raised to fund this project.

On his Telegram channel, Durov announced: “Today is a sad day for us here at Telegram. We are announcing the discontinuation of our blockchain project. Below is a summary of what it was and why we had to abandon it”.

With the TON Blockchain, Telegram has envisioned creating a state-of-the-art blockchain project in a way that would commercialize blockchain projects and host massive industrial-scale projects.

In another statement, Durov said: “For the last two and a half years some of our best engineers have been working on a next-generation blockchain platform called TON and a cryptocurrency we were going to name Gram. TON was designed to share the principles of decentralization pioneered by Bitcoin and Ethereum, but to be vastly superior to them in speed and scalability”.

CEO Pavel Durov confirmed that the project is completely abandoned. Thus, he advised all not to trust any project that claims to be promoted by TON. Durov also took a dig at the U.S. saying how it still continues to influence decentralized markets.

“Sadly, the U.S. judge is right about one thing: we, the people outside the U.S., can vote for our presidents and elect our parliaments, but we are still dependent on the United States when it comes to finance and technology,” wrote Durov. 

Previously, Durov had given an option to its investors to walk away with 72% now or wait a year and take 110% returns. Most investors showed confidence in the TON project and said that they were willing to wait.