the billionaire founder of a billion-dollar company with over a billion monthly active users, @durov, just added “founder at @ton_blockchain” to his bio.
founder mode is officially on.
the-open-network:native to $10 already?
it’s exhilarating how quickly sentiment changes directly proportional to price action.
sometimes I genuinely wonder what we even believed in to begin with. 😭
THE BLOCK: Telegram CEO Pavel Durov said Gram cryptocurrency is "still ridiculously undervalued," pointing to its 8% gain in the past day amid a broader crypto market downturn that saw bitcoin:native fall 2.4% and ethereum:native lose 4%.
"No surprise there. It's the only coin built into a real social ecosystem … It belongs in CMC's top 3," Durov said. the-open-network:native
when durov's prophecy of the-open-network:native getting into top 3 crypto comes true, memecoins on TON will be sitting in billions of market cap
the opportunity within meme ecosystem on TON is abnormal
A man raised $1.7 BILLION to build a blockchain for Telegram, abandoned it after a legal battle, and returned six years later to lead its development.
- Pavel Durov co-founded VKontakte in 2006, which grew into Russia's largest social network with over 100 MILLION users.
- In 2014, he left VK after a dispute over the company's ownership and pressure to hand over user information.
- He had already launched Telegram with his brother Nikolai in 2013, building a messaging app focused on privacy.
- A few years later, the brothers wanted to take Telegram beyond messaging by building its own blockchain ecosystem.
- In 2018, they announced Telegram Open Network (TON) and its planned cryptocurrency, the-open-network:native.
- The project raised approximately $1.7 BILLION from investors, making it one of crypto's biggest private token sales.
- But in 2019, the SEC sued Telegram, arguing that its Gram token sale involved unregistered securities.
- A US court blocked the token launch, and Telegram eventually abandoned the project in May 2020.
- The company agreed to return more than $1.2 BILLION to investors and pay an $18.5 MILLION penalty.
- But TON didn't die.
- Two developers, Anatoliy Makosov and Kirill Emelyanenko, continued building the open-source project with an independent community.
- By 2021, that community had formed the TON Foundation, and Telegram transferred the original technology and domain to the independent developers.
- Telegram later began integrating TON into its ecosystem, giving the blockchain a direct connection to its massive user base.
- Then, in May 2026, Durov announced that Telegram would replace the TON Foundation as TON's main driving force and become its largest validator.
- TON survived the collapse of its original launch, was rebuilt by an independent community, and eventually found its way back into Telegram's plans.
What started as a $1.7 BILLION project that looked dead became a second chance to turn Telegram's billion-user audience into a major blockchain ecosystem.