Telegram’s blockchain project, TON, has entered the last preparation stage before going live. The code for running a blockchain node was released on the test network portal late Friday.
Yesterday, Telegram delivered its Telegram Open Network (TON) testnet explorer and node software on its website.
Last month, three anonymous investors in Telegram’s $1.7 billion private initial coin offering said that Telegram confirmed they would issue the first Gram tokens by October. Telegram then said that Gram digital wallets for its tokens will be accessible by all of its 300 million users around the world when the time comes. The giant hopes that Gram tokens will facilitate cross-border payments, making fund transfers a lot easier. This is similar to goals indicated by Facebook in its Libra whitepaper.
The 31st of October has been set as the deadline for the release of the first batch of Gram tokens. Telegram had initially released to its investors, a paper totaling about 132 pages, explaining that Telegram users would easily send and receive Gram tokens through its own blockchain called the Telegram Open Network (TON).
As per Russian news outlet Vedomosti, who quoted an anonymous TON investor, TON’s node software and all important files should have been released to the public on Sept. 1. The source then said that the first version of the blockchain is expected to feature sharding and various functional consensus mechanisms.
However, the code for running a blockchain node was released on the test network portal late yesterday. Now developers and community members interested in the messaging app provider’s blockchain, can start using the node at its full, including a validator node and the blockchain explorer.
The reasons for delaying were not officially announced.
CTO of TON Labs Mitja Goroshevsky, who worked on tools for devs, said there are currently 100 nodes maintained by Telegram itself on the testnet. Several more are maintained by his startup, helped by investors in Telegram’s token sale, which raised $1.7 billion in early 2018.
Goroshevsky went on to explain:
“Source code for a full node that can access testnet, create and validate blocks has been released. Lite client was released several months ago. TON Labs will release Public Beta of its developer tools suite on Monday.”
Just for reminder, Telegram launched a private beta testing of the TON blockchain to a limited number of global developers in April. Two anonymous testers then discovered that the blockchain demonstrated an extremely high transaction speed.
In other news, TON Labs is also said to be building numerous tools for developers in order to help them build on the new network. TON Labs CEO and managing partner Alexander Filatov said that one of these tools will be a Solidity compiler, which will allow decentralized applications built for Ethereum to also run on TON. He said:
“That was probably the most difficult thing we built. It will allow the advanced Ethereum community to pull everything they wrote for Ethereum into TON.”
Be it as it may, the mainnet launch for the Telegram Open Network is set to happen no later than Oct. 31. or they will return investor’s money if they fail to do so.
Filatov said that this code release will be the most important stage of TON’s rollout:
“We have very little time between the node release and the mainnet launch to test, identify and fix possibly bugs and vulnerabilities.”
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