The new Telegram project, called TON (Telegram Open Network), has now been opened to a small number of developers of which not everyone has been announced. The operation and transactions through this platform are tested by these developers and the transaction speeds would be called ‘extremely fast’.

Telegram would like to use the blockchain and its cryptocurrency to exponentially grow crypto use. Telegram has the same kind of thinking as the crypto world, namely decentralization. With TON, users can create decentralized apps (DApps) that will be supported by Telegram’s new token. The new token will be named Gram.

Telegram managed to raise 1.7 billion through an initial coin offering (a kind of IPO for the cryptocurrency world). This amount was collected within a month and is also a record for ‘non-public’ ICOs.

This record is seen by Iran as a threat to national security and Russia has already banned the app completely from the country. This is mainly due to the privacy that the app gives its users.

Telegram is unlikely to care too much about Iran and Russia because the app has more than 200 million users worldwide. Because Telegram already has a huge user base that values privacy, it is expected that the Gram will be used on a large scale. The rumors are that this project should be usable before October.

Finally, people close to the file said that Telegram was discussing with several important Asian crypto-exchanges such as Huobi, OKEx, and Binance for the listing of its GRAM token.

For some experts, GRAM could quickly become one of the largest cryptocurrencies given a large number of Telegram users (more than 200 million). Recently, the social network has invested in a blockchain startup and strengthened its team dedicated to this technology set up in the spring of 2018.

In addition, last month, unnamed sources cited by Bloomberg claimed that Facebook was working on a cryptocurrency type stable coin for WhatsApp.