Original｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author: Wenser (@wenser2010)
Early this morning, French TV revealed that Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested at a French airport and faced multiple charges of fraud, money laundering, terrorism, and other crimes. The market was shocked when the news came out. After SBF was jailed for the FTX crash and CZ settled with the US authorities for money laundering, Pavel Durov became another example of "being convicted for speech." According to Ekaterina Mizulina, head of the Russian Secure Internet Alliance, Pavel Durov's arrest was a request from the United States to crack down on the super currency Toncoin (TON) circulating on Telegram in order to continue the previous US SEC sanctions policy.
Will the booming TON ecosystem suffer a "second devastating blow"? What will be the future trend of popular projects related to the TON ecosystem? Will the subsequent operation of the Telegram platform undergo turbulent changes? Odaily Planet Daily will briefly analyze the above questions in this article.
TON Ecosystem: From a decentralized community, back to a decentralized community
As of the time of writing, according to Coingecko data, the price of TON tokens has fallen to $5.83, a 24-hour drop of 13.3%. The current market value is $14.74 billion, still ranking tenth in the cryptocurrency token market value ranking; DefiLlama data shows that the TON network TVL has fallen from $770 million on July 21 to around $304 million today, and the ecosystem TVL has decreased by more than 50%, and the market risk aversion sentiment is strong.
TON Token Performance
In response to the arrest of Pavel Durov, TON officials said, "We assure everyone that the TON community remains strong and fully operational. As a community committed to freedom of speech and decentralization, we firmly support Pavel Durov in this challenging time. He has always been a loyal advocate of these values, and we believe that his efforts to promote an open and decentralized Internet will continue to inspire millions of people. The TON community remains focused on our mission, and we will continue to work hard to uphold these principles around the world. We encourage everyone to stay calm and unite to continue building as we work together to deal with this situation. Thank you for your continued support."
As mentioned in the article "Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested, and a 10,000-word review of his legendary rise to wealth", the creation of TON (The Open Network) can also be described as ill-fated: after its first announcement in January 2018, Telegram raised $1.2 billion in funds from first-tier star investment institutions such as Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, Kleiner Perkins and Lightspeed through IC0; in October 2019, one month after Telegram released the TON experimental source code, the U.S. SEC stated that it had determined that TON token financing constituted the sale of unregulated securities, and Stephanie Avakian, co-director of its enforcement division, stated, "The emergency action taken today is intended to prevent Telegram from illegally selling digital tokens to the U.S. market." In May 2020, Pavel Durov announced that he would abandon TON, and subsequently returned 72% of the investment funds (a total of $1.2 billion) to TON investors. In addition, Telegram also paid the U.S. SEC $18.5 million in fines, but did not “admit or deny the allegations.”
Eventually, Pavel Durov handed over control of TON to the "community", and thanks to the open source code, Toncoin (TON) eventually stood out and was recognized by Pavel Durov at the end of 2021.
TON TVL Performance
And now, after going around in circles, the decentralized community that Pavel Durov once had high hopes for has not disappointed his expectations.
After Pavel Durov was arrested in France, many team members of the TON ecosystem spoke out:
Steve Yun, chairman of the TON Foundation, published an article quoting Durov’s views in a 2015 CNN interview: “It is impossible to make messaging technology safe for everyone except terrorists. It is either safe or it is not safe”, “All these activities are used as an excuse to monitor citizens and suppress dissidents”. This is the best annotation of Durov’s experience today.
TON Ventures officially stated in a statement, “Today, we see more than ever the necessity of free speech and decentralization - two causes advocated by @durov and at the core of the TON spirit. We believe that the TON and TG communities will become stronger as a result. #FREEDUROV” This statement was also retweeted and supported by Inal Kardan, partner of TON Ventures.
In addition, investors related to the TON ecosystem and representative figures in the U.S. political and business circles have expressed indignation and highly supported Durov himself.
Franklin Bi, a partner at Pantera Capital, one of TON's investment institutions, posted "#FreePavel" and later retweeted TON's official statement.
Elon Musk posted a message saying, "This is propaganda for the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution." He sarcastically said, "Imagine, POV: In 2030, you are executed in Europe for liking a meme."
Tucker Carlson, a well-known American political commentator and journalist, said, "Pavel Durov left Russia when the Russian government tried to control his social media company Telegram. But in the end it was not Putin who arrested him for allowing the public to exercise freedom of speech, but a Western country (referring to France), an ally of the Biden administration and an enthusiastic NATO member, who locked him up. Pavel Durov sitting in a French prison tonight is a living warning to any platform owner who refuses to censor the truth at the request of governments and intelligence agencies. Darkness is rapidly descending on the once free world."
Jupiter co-founder Meow even directly quoted the Chinese phrase “borrowing a knife to kill someone”, saying that Durov’s arrest was a living example, and later posted a message saying “the world urgently needs a decentralized power base, please stop fawning over centralized financial power.”
“French authorities are going to charge Pavel Durov with terrorism because he refused to censor certain groups,” said Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst. “Telegram is one of the few channels that actually allows information critical of Western policies to continue to spread. I think that’s the root of the problem.”
Russian State Duma Deputy Chairman Davankov called on the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to try to rescue Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov, saying that he had sent a corresponding request to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Russian Embassy in France has taken the necessary measures to understand the situation of Pavel Durov.
It can be seen that Durov’s arrest in France was beyond everyone’s expectations, but the TON ecosystem, as a “system supported by community autonomy,” has not yet been affected except by price and market value.
TON Ecosystem Project: Supports Pavel Durov, and its own operations are not affected
In response to Pavel Durov’s arrest in France, many projects in the TON ecosystem have expressed their support and stated that their operations will not be affected in any way.
The DOGS community, a TON ecosystem meme coin project that uses Pavel Durov’s favorite black and white dog as its image symbol, posted in its official Telegram channel: “We support Pavel Durov, privacy and truth, which are particularly important at this moment.”
Durov holding a photo of a black and white dog
NOTCOIN, a benchmark project of the TON ecosystem that has previously been listed on mainstream exchanges such as Binance and donated more than 1 billion NOT tokens to Pavel Durov and the Telegram platform, officially stated, "Not guilty, #freedurov."
Telegram Wallet posted on its official channel: “We are closely following the recent news about Telegram founder Pavel Durov, but these events will not affect the operation of Wallet in any way.”
Viktor, head of community growth at Ton Society, wrote, “The matrix is real...Now they attack Telegram and TON because Pavel Durov refuses to give up people’s privacy rights. France should be ashamed of itself. The French should fight for their freedom of speech. I ask everyone to support Pavel in this challenging time. #FREEDUROV”
TON Takeover cited Durov’s view in a previous interview that “privacy is not a crime.”
The official account of Hamster Network, a well-known TON ecological project, also issued a message calling on Musk to intervene: "This is an emergency, but there is at least one person X who can try to influence it. Dear @elonmusk, please post to protect supporters of free speech #FREEDUROV."
As the "soil" for the survival of many projects in the TON ecosystem, Pavel Durov and the Telegram platform have received unanimous support from this group of people who share weal and woe. After all, "if the skin is gone, where will the hair be attached?"
Telegram platform: The future is uncertain, but it still has support from another co-founder Nicolia
Finally, for the Telegram platform, in addition to the arrested founder Pavel Durov, there is also the proposer of Telegram's open network consensus mechanism Catchain and another co-founder Nikolai Durov who can support the subsequent development of the platform.
Although from the X platform account (Odaily note: search results, not sure whether it is his account), Nikolai has not spoken much, so at this time when the future is uncertain, it is difficult for us to determine the future direction of the Telegram platform. However, judging from the past development history of this social communication platform that started in 2013, its monthly active user volume of nearly 1 billion is already a major ecosystem in the Internet world, and it will not go to an irreversible situation in the short term.
Although the TON ecosystem and Telegram platform may fall into a state of "leaderlessness" in the short term, the existence of co-founder Nikolai Durov will provide support for this ecosystem.
Summary: TON ecological development has encountered twists and turns, but the actual development has not been affected too much
According to the previous "TON Foundation appointed Andrew Rogozov as a founding member and he will oversee the product work of the blockchain project", the integration of TON ecosystem and Telegram shows that the two are two entities, and the possibility of "cutting" or "integration splitting" is not ruled out.
Even if the news of the arrest of its founder affects the Telegram platform, it may face a decrease in the number of platform users, but it will not "hurt the TON ecosystem". As freedom of speech becomes more and more precious today, this move may further promote the development of a number of decentralized blockchain networks, including the TON ecosystem, and make more people realize the importance of encrypted communications, decentralized finance, and decentralized society.
