Two years after abandoning its blockchain endeavor, the Open Network (TON) foundation, an engineering networking group, has announced that users will be able to send crypto payments on Telegram.
Telegram’s cryptocurrency operation was shut down when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States imposed excessive pressure on the company. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai created TON in 2018. The SEC ordered Telegram to cease its sales of Gram, a token related to the TON blockchain, a year after the project was established, claiming that it had failed to register the $1.7 billion in sales received as part of its pre-ICO. Telegram, on the other hand, abandoned the token in the year 2020. After dropping its old blockchain operation, the WhatsApp competitor was able to launch a new coin and rename it Toncoin.
Telegram now accepts Toncoin transactions with no costs, according to a tweet from TON.
“I’m proud that the technology we created is alive and evolving… TON is still years ahead of everything else in the blockchain realm,” Durov said
Earlier in April, the TON project was able to receive $1 billion in donations.