If it looks like a scam, expressed like a scam, and promoted like a scam, then it probably is a scam.<p>Let me explain... achieving scale with public and private blockchains is a difficult computer science problem. Even if Dr. Nikolai Durov [1] is a genius, he is competing with other geniuses who are at least trying to probe their points in a more formal way [2]. It is not by chance that it is taking so long for Vitalik and other researchers to solve the scalability and security issues in Ethereum. So until other peers don't analyze Dr. Durov results via adversarial attacks we will not know how real are his claims.<p>A serious alternative to this ICO would be raising money for a PoC including hiring other researchers to break the original scheme. For example, before RSA was finished, Adleman worked on breaking the schemes devised by Rivest and Shamir until RSA was born [3].<p>This does not mean that you cannot make money, speculation works in a different dimension.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Durov" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Durov</a><p>[2] <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J8hehbnZWzcIUMQcxMiGbjz86wDu3zDFF7UtkR0XjGE/" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J8hehbnZWzcIUMQcxMiGbjz8...</a><p>[3] <a href="http://teacher.scu.edu.cn/ftp_teacher0/chjtang/teach/adleman.htm" rel="nofollow">http://teacher.scu.edu.cn/ftp_teacher0/chjtang/teach/adleman...</a>
> The “TON Blockchain” will consist of a master chain and 2-to-the-power-of-92 accompanying blockchains<p>> “Infinite Sharding Paradigm” to achieve scalability<p>> “Instant Hypercube Routing”<p>> "it will also use 2-D Distributed Ledgers."<p>There's no doubt that if you want to make a quick buck, this buzzword-laden series of claims will attract many greater fools. But the ongoing crypto-hubris is unattractive to say the least.
The next Ethereum? I'm still waiting for the current ethereum to show any kind of reason for its existence beyond an admittedly cool tech demo.<p>I'm not seeing anything in this offering which couldn't be done more easily and cheaply by a ton (sorry) of other payment options. Notably they say they want to be WeChat - and they've done it all without any need for blockchains.
According to the whitepaper (on page 18) it cost $70m to run Telegram just for 2017 and a total of $171m since 2014. Pavel Durov had a net worth of about $300m when he left VK in 2014 and as far as I know he's the only source of funding for Telegram. This seems like one way to change that and hopefully ensure financial stability, if it works out. I'm not sure it will though, which is unfortunate as I quite like Telegram.<p>There's always Wire, I suppose. As long as they stay afloat.
Yes like any other ICO this is risky. However there is a big difference between this and other crytocoins: there is already a large base of pre-existing users of Telegram. With TON, Telegram has the potential to become WeChat outside of China.
Why on the earth they don't just do a telegram based digital money without any block chain but just an N nodes database Geo distributed? So that you can pay real money to have telecoins (or whatever) and that's all. Oh wait... This prevents earning 1 billion of dollars to give back monopoly money.
The article is rather out of date, stating<p>> $1.2 billion. That blows any other token sale out of the water, and it would easily surpass the current record of $257 million raised by Filecoin<p>and showing EOS as having raised $200M. In fact, EOS claims to have already raised over $1.1B and its ICO is still continuing for another 5 months:<p><a href="https://steemit.com/eos/@simoncase/eos-announcement-what-just-happened" rel="nofollow">https://steemit.com/eos/@simoncase/eos-announcement-what-jus...</a>
I think a serious conversation that needs to be had is that there a lot of tech companies that can produce a useful service. Twitter, Telegram, Snapchat etc come time to mind, but they will never generate a profit like a traditional business.<p>Does that mean that these services should not exist? Or does it mean there needs to be a non traditional way of financing to where creators can build the product and then have a reasonable way of "being done".<p>Something like Twitter reached a point where it didn't really need more features. How could it sustain itself without constantly growing and paying profits to shareholders?<p>I don't know the answer to this, but it's certainly something that needs to be discussed, because the unfortunate truth is that there are many good services that don't make money
> It could turn Telegram from a messaging app into a platform that hosts internet-based content which could, in theory, operate micro-paywalls that let users unlock news or subscriptions for small amounts of crypto payment, while there’s also the potential to become a major payment hub.<p>So... it does pretty much everything? So much for decentralization. Sure, it's theoretically decentralized, but it's disturbing that Telegram is trying to both take over so many blockchain applications and retain partial control over each one.
<i>[citation needed]</i><p>Looks like rumors and disinformation spreaded by Anton Rozenberg - former Telegram developer. Russian journalists refer to his Facebook post[1].
IIRC, Rosenberg and Durov had some serious conflict. I've seen article on Medium[2] (earlier with unblurred screenshots) and Rosenberg seemed to me not quite adequate person.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.facebook.com/id77777/posts/10154846872521076" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/id77777/posts/10154846872521076</a> (Russian)<p>[2] <a href="https://medium.com/@anton.rozenberg/pavel-durov-sued-senior-tech-lead-for-1-7-b24961dec503" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@anton.rozenberg/pavel-durov-sued-senior-...</a>