Telegram founder announces cancellation of $1.7 billion blockchain project TON

Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov has announced that plans for the launch of his $1.7 billion blockchain project TON have been cancelled.

“I am writing this post to officially announce that Telegram’s active involvement with TON is over. You may see — or may have already seen — sites using my name or the Telegram brand or the ‘TON’ abbreviation to promote their projects. Don’t trust them with your money or data,” Durov wrote on his official Telegram channel.

According to Durov, none of the current or former team members from the TON project is involved in any of these other ventures.

Telegram announced plans to launch the blockchain platform TON, along with its own cryptocurrency Gram, in 2018. However, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission banned the issuing of Gram tokens in October 2019, on the grounds that they should be registered as a security.

The TON platform was meant to launch on April 30, but this didn’t happen. The project had already attracted $1.7 billion in investment.

On May 7, a group called the Free TON Community, which allegedly consists of developers from Durov’s blockchain project, announced the launch of another blockchain platform called FREE TON.