Telegram Will Shut Down TON Project By August 2020

Recently, the cryptonews showed that Telegram has terminated its blockchain project named the Telegram Open Network (TON). And while the closure of the project was in May 2020, the TON test has been running for almost one year. In the latest updates, we can see that Telegram will shut down TON and its testnet, and bring the entire project to an end.

An update shared on July 6 shows that the official TON development group on Telegram announced that it would be discontinuing its support of the test network for TON. The remaining TON validators will be also turned off by August 1. In the post, we see that the TON official recommended network participants save all of their relevant data and stop their testing processes.

Despite all of this and the testnet being shut down less than a month from now, we can see that many network participants will still be able to continue their experiments after this testnet is terminated. Telegram will shut down TON but as the post shows, users can install their own testnet validators which are described in greater detail in three how-to documents with guidelines for the Full Node, the Validator, and Test Grams.

Launched in September 2019, the Telegram TON testnet was meant for explorer and node software. What many anticipated was the scheduled October 31 launch last year, when the company released an alpha version of an iOS wallet to work with the native token, the Gram.

However, Telegram’s TON plans were never fully completed as the United States Securities and Exchange Commission stepped in, deeming the $1.7 billion Telegram ICO as illegal in mid-October last year.

The legal battle for Telegram has been long running, after which the network agreed to terminate the project. In that manner, Telegram will shut down TON completely, and return $1.2 billion to investors in line with a court-approved final settlement.

Pavel Durov, who is the CEO of the entire project, also appeared in the blockchain news and said that the firm already reimbursed more than $1.2 billion by June 25 this year. The remaining money, if any, are expected to be refunded by the end of this month, as per the latest updates.