What Was TON And Why It Is Over

May 13, 2020

      https://telegra.ph/What-Was-TON-And-Why-It-Is-Over-05-12

Interessantissima lettura.

Giudice o meno, TON era fuffa blockchain e come tale destinata,
secondo la mia autorevolissima predizione (:-D), a fallire miseramente
entro il 2020.
Per cui Durov non la conta giusta e mi piacerebbe molto leggere la sentenza.

Ma per quanto giungano da un bimbo imbronciato cui è stato tolto il
giocattolo, le considerazioni geopolitiche sono assolutamente
imperdibili. :-D

Giacomo
_____

For the last 2,5 years some of our best engineers have been working on
a next-generation blockchain platform called TON and a cryptocurrency
we were going to name Gram. TON was designed to share the principles
of decentralization pioneered by Bitcoin and Ethereum, but to be
vastly superior to them in speed and scalability.

We were very proud with the result – the technology we created allowed
for an open, free, decentralized exchange of value and ideas. When
integrated with Telegram, TON had the potential to revolutionize how
people store and transfer funds and information.

Unfortunately, a US court stopped TON from happening. How? Imagine
that several people put their money together to build a gold mine –
and to later split the gold that comes out of it. Then a judge comes
and tells the mine builders: "Many people invested in the gold mine
because they were looking for profits. And they didn't want that gold
for themselves, they wanted to sell it to other people. Because of
this, you are not allowed to give them the gold."

If this doesn't make sense to you, you are not alone – but this is
exactly what happened with TON (the mine), its investors, and Grams
(the gold). A judge used this reasoning to rule that people should not
be allowed to buy or sell Grams like they can buy or sell Bitcoins.

Perhaps even more paradoxically, the US court declared that Grams
couldn't be distributed not only in the United States, but globally.
Why? Because, it said, a US citizen might find some way of accessing
the TON platform after it launched. So, to prevent this, Grams
shouldn’t be allowed to be distributed anywhere in the world – even if
every other country on the planet seemed to be perfectly fine with
TON.

This court decision implies that other countries don’t have the
sovereignty to decide what is good and what is bad for their own
citizens. If the US suddenly decided to ban coffee and demanded coffee
shops in Italy be closed because some American might go there – we
doubt anyone would agree.

And yet, despite that, we have made the difficult decision not to
proceed with TON.

Sadly, the US judge is right about one thing: we, the people outside
the US, can vote for our presidents and elect our parliaments, but we
are still dependent on the United States when it comes to finance and
technology (luckily not coffee). The US can use its control over the
dollar and the global financial system to shut down any bank or bank
account in the world. It can use its control over Apple and Google to
remove apps from the App Store and Google Play. So yes, it is true
that other countries do not have full sovereignty over what to allow
on their territory. Unfortunately, we – the 96% of the world’s
population living elsewhere – are dependent on decision makers elected
by the 4% living in the US.

This may change in the future. But today, we are in a vicious circle:
you can’t bring more balance to an overly centralized world exactly
because it’s so centralized. We did try though. We're leaving it to
the the next generations of entrepreneurs and developers to pick up
the banner and learn from our mistakes.

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. No
present or past member of our team is involved with any of these
projects. While networks based on the technology we built for TON may
appear, we won’t have any affiliation with them and are unlikely to
ever support them in any way. So be careful, and don’t let anyone
mislead you.

I want to conclude this post by wishing luck to all those striving for
decentralization, balance and equality in the world. You are fighting
the right battle. This battle may well be the most important battle of
our generation. We hope that you succeed where we have failed.

Giacomo Tesio

Giovanni Biscuolo

Giacomo Tesio

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