Building a thriving crypto project in a highly dynamic sector that comprises around 20,000 cryptocurrencies by the latest count and where failure is much more frequent than success is certainly no easy feat.
With all sorts of innovative projects being launched and numerous challenges getting in the way, ranging from technological complexities to regulatory uncertainty, security concerns, and market volatility, the competition in the crypto space is fiercer than ever. It takes a thorough understanding of the market, commitment, time, and a dedicated team of skilled developers to overcome these obstacles and rise above the rest.
Therefore, newcomers have to work much harder to demonstrate their worth than their predecessors, who benefited from a more favorable context, which is why we have more losers than winners in the crypto industry.
Ranking 13th in the crypto standings by market cap, Toncoin falls in the latter category, being one of the very few assets to make it to the top despite the bumpy ride. The evolution of the Toncoin price this year reflects the token’s rising popularity and growth potential, emerging as one of the most interesting success stories in the crypto realm.
So, let’s flip together through the pages that have been written so far and see where Toncoin’s story might lead.
A Crypto Star in the Making
Toncoin was born out of Telegram’s desire to broaden its capabilities and enter the blockchain space. The social media and instant messaging (IM) platform founded by the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov started to gain popularity soon after its launch in 2013, thanks to its unique and robust design, which ensured a high level of security and privacy. By December 2014, the cloud-based app had already reached 50 million active users and over 1 billion messages sent daily.
Around 2017, the Telegram team started to explore the concept of decentralization and decided that the next logical step in the network’s development was to break into the blockchain realm. Unable to find a suitable Layer 1 blockchain to support their endeavors, the team began working on creating their own chain, the Telegram Open Network (TON), and its native token GRAM, which the company started distributing in 2018 through a private sale to attract investments and raise funds for the project.
The idea was to build a scalable blockchain based on a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, focused on facilitating fast and secure transactions and enabling the deployment of a wide variety of decentralized applications (dApps) through smart contract capabilities while also ensuring low fees, with the GRAM token acting as a medium of exchange in the platform’s ecosystem. These bold goals were meant to make TON a much more efficient and appealing network than older albeit more established blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Legal Complications
Telegram’s soon-to-be-launched blockchain project looked great on paper, and things appeared to go according to plan up to a point when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) got involved.
In 2019, the agency stated that the GRAM tokens that Telegram sold to Initial Purchasers during the 2018 ICO constituted unregistered securities and represented a danger for investors, therefore violating federal securities laws. A lawsuit was filed in this respect and so started Telegram’s legal feud with the SEC while the project was stopped in its tracks.
Telegram tried to fight back and asked the Southern District Court of New York to deny the legal action requested by the SEC, asserting that the agency’s stance went against legal precedents and that their digital tokens were not securities. However, in the end, the court ruled in SEC’s favor, and Telegram accepted the settlement proposed to them, which implied renouncing the project, returning $1.2 billion of the funds to investors, and paying a $18.5 million penalty to the US regulator. The company officially withdrew from the TON project in May 2020.
New Beginnings
In a fortunate twist of events, TON’s story didn’t end with Telegram’s withdrawal. Despite the major setback caused by SEC’s actions, TON had managed to attract a large number of supporters who believed in the project’s potential and didn’t want to let it all go to waste, proving that, in their case, all publicity was good publicity.
The initiative was revived by a small team of open-source software developers known as NewTON. They picked up TON from where it was left and resumed development, remaining true to the principles and vision outlined in the TON whitepaper. To mark the start of a new chapter in TON’s evolution and avoid any potential legal issues, they also decided to rebrand the project. So, the Telegram Open Network became The Open Network, while the GRAM token turned into Toncoin.
From this point on, Toncoin started crossing one milestone after another, including the launch of the TON mainnet and several other notable technological upgrades, which led to traders and investors becoming ever-more interested in the asset.
Its fast speed, low fees, high scalability, and sturdy infrastructure, along with the massive support it gets from the Telegram community, established TON as one of the most powerful blockchains available and Toncoin as one of the most promising cryptos in the market.
2024 has been a particularly exciting year for Toncoin as the asset established a new record high of $ 8.235023, registering gains of over 134%.
Into the Future
With such a tumultuous past, one can’t help but wonder what lies ahead for Toncoin. The crypto has navigated through some rough waters until now and might come to face further challenges in the future as the market remains as volatile as ever. However, the resilience and strength that the TON blockchain has demonstrated so far provide solid reasons for maintaining an optimistic outlook. The project is expected to continue on an ascending trend as more market players become aware of its potential and strong suits.
