Telegram's TON Blockchain Is on Track for Late-October Launch Date

Telegram Open Network (TON) is on track for its planned launch, according to an email from the company sent to TON investors on Wednesday.

Mitja Goroshevsky, CTO of TON Labs, a startup building tools for TON developers, confirmed the authenticity of the email to CoinDesk, adding that TON Labs itself "will run and manage its own validation pool."

"Original investors received emails from the Telegram core team," a post in the Telegram channel dedicated to the project said, adding that investors need to provide Telegram with their public keys by Oct. 16 using the key generator in order to receive the tokens, or "grams," they bought.

Notably, the message also mentions governance matters, saying Telegram itself will recuse itself from running the network:

"Investors have to select validators. Neither Telegram nor the TON Foundation will serve as validators post-launch."

As CoinDesk reported, the code for TON was released in early September, allowing the broad community to try out full nodes, validator nodes and a block explorer.

The project is scheduled to launch no later than Oct. 31, according to existing agreements with TON investors. The blockchain, which raised $1.7 billion in early 2018, has been built in near-total secrecy. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has never publicly announced TON's existence.

The only official confirmation so far has been the registration with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the project's SAFT (simple agreement for future tokens) – featuring the names of Telegram Group, Inc., Pavel Durov and Nikolai Durov, the CEO's brother who is also TON's chief architect.

Telegram image via Shutterstock