The TON blockchain created by Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov is promising big things will happen this year, setting itself a goal that no other blockchain has yet been able to achieve – it’s aiming for nothing less than mass adoption. TON was created by Durov and his brother Nikolai back in 2017. It’s one of the most ambitious blockchain projects of all and all the more so when we consider its tumultuous past. Designed to be vastly superior to Bitcoin and Ethereum in terms of speed and scalability, TON got off to a good start, raising almost $1.7 billion from investors through an initial coin offering. However, things quickly unraveled for Telegram when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stepped in to halt the sale in October 2019, claiming that TON’s GRAM tokens were unregistered securities. That move ultimately led Telegram to drop the TON project, handing over the work it had done to the open-source community, which has since rebranded GRAM as Toncoin. With Telegram washing its hands off of the TON project, very little was heard about it during the intervening months. It had, in effect, become one of a growing number of forgotten blockchains that promised so much only to fade away into obscurity. That all changed last month though, when Durov suddenly announced on Telegram the TON project is not only still “alive” but moreover, “evolving” fast. TON quickly followed up, announcing a partnership with D...
