$TON #TON

I will say now that TON will explode in the later stage, and I guess there will be a lot of criticism!!!

When discussing TON, many people may be optimistic about it. But I want to raise some concerns today, which may cause controversy.

The story of TON dates back to 2017, when the Durov brothers, the founders of Telegram, began to explore blockchain solutions to accommodate their large user base. Since there was no suitable L1 blockchain in the market that could meet Telegram's needs, they decided to create their own L1 blockchain - TON.

At the end of 2017, the team released the TON white paper and soon started a closed ICO, raising $1.7 billion by selling TON tokens (called Grams). The funds were used to build TON, and in 2019 they released two test networks and open sourced the code.

However, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused them of conducting an unregistered securities offering in the ICO, which led to legal disputes. In 2020, Telegram was forced to refund investors and pay a $18.5 million fine, and eventually abandoned its support for TON, which also prompted TON to rename itself The Open Network.

Despite the many challenges, an entity called TON Labs took over the project and continued to move forward. It was not until September 2023 that Telegram officially announced its cooperation with TON again, which attracted widespread attention and caused TON's market value to climb to about $25 billion, becoming the ninth largest crypto project.

Considering the background of TON's founders Pavel Durov and Nikolai Durov, their parents held senior positions at Moscow University during the Soviet era. Telegram's headquarters has also undergone multiple relocations, from St. Petersburg to Berlin, London, Singapore, and finally to Dubai.

The reason why I am worried that TON may encounter problems is mainly based on the following reasons:

1. Regulatory risks: Historical legal disputes with the SEC show the regulatory challenges faced by TON. Although the project has been restarted, changes in the regulatory environment may still have a negative impact on it.

2. Technical implementation: Although the team has demonstrated strong technical capabilities, the difficulty and complexity of implementing such a large-scale project still exist.

3. Market acceptance: Although the Telegram community is large, it will take time and effort for its user base to widely adopt Ton's technology and tokens.