- Telegram’s blockchain platform, TON, might be launched despite a court order that allowed the SEC to halt its $1.7 billion token sale.
- A US court on March 24 ruled that Telegram tokens (grams) be deemed as securities as per an earlier request by the SEC.
- Till then, the messaging company will not be able to proceed with its blockchain network launch.
The Telegram community, however, is determined to roll out TON and have since come up with suggestions to pioneer this network either way. Fedor Skuratov, who is the founder and previously TON Labs communications manager, is leading over 25 developers within this ecosystem. So far, one of the tabled possibilities is launching TON without the involvement of Telegram’s team or the firm as an entity. Skuratov noted that this strategy is among those in serious consideration, given TON’s open-source nature.
Technicality Aspects
Assuming the Telegram Community Devs proceed with this launch, some technical and legal aspects might present unexpected challenges. Skuratov is however optimistic that developers will be able to form a consensus as soon as the platform goes live. This is because the only requirements are the generation of a genesis block and 13 validators within TON’s network;
“Strictly speaking, no additional measures are required to launch TON by the community, except for a consensus within the community.
But in order to get recognized, we will need to come to an agreement with investors (at least, with a majority of them),”
Ideally, this approach is similar to hard forks with the only difference being TON’s main version has yet to go live. On the upside, Telegram had already published the nodes to facilitate TON’s launch. Furthermore, TON Labs, has been running its own similar testnet whose value is pegged to a consensus amongst the investors.
TON Investors Sentiments and Legality
This proposed path might sound like a good option but will be hard to implement given the unsettled atmosphere since September 2019. Investors who were expecting gram tokens based on their acquired TON ownership have become increasingly impatient. They had agreed to a postponement launch from October 2019 to April this year; it is now uncertain although Telegram filed a notice to appeal the latest court decision.
Given this development, TON investors are likely to be proposed an extension of the gram token allocation. Alternatively, they might be compensated up to a certain percentage of their investment.
