Telegram Bot Payment Service Donate to Accept Toncoin Cryptocurrency

The Open Network (TON) has partnered with Telegram verified payment Bot, Donate to accept the blockchain protocol’s native token, Toncoin as a means for users to make donations and pay for their subscriptions in Toncoin. The announcement was shared on TON’s community Telegram channel, a development that has been acknowledged by Telegram founder, Pavel Durov.

The TON Blockchain was started by Durov and his brother Nikolai back in 2017, and the duo’s attempt to float GRAM token after its $1.7 billion Initial Coin Offering (ICO) back in 2018 met with stiff resistance and lawsuit from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The lawsuit ended with the TON Blockchain paying a heavy fine of about $18.5 million according to the Wall Street Journal. Following the settlement, Durov and Nikolai stepped away from the project.

TON Blockchain Found a Way to Survive

In a good twist as acknowledged by Durov in a statement posted on his official Telegram Channel on Thursday, it was satisfying to know that the TON Blockchain project was not continued by other developers. Durov believes the work is too innovative not to benefit humanity, and Toncoin is a rebrand of the once-embattled TON cryptocurrency.

“When Telegram said goodbye to TON last year, I expressed the hope that future generations of developers would one day carry on with our vision of a mass-market blockchain platform. So I was inspired to see the champions of Telegram’s coding contests continue developing the open TON project, which they rebranded to Toncoin,” Durov said, adding that he is “proud that the technology we created is alive and evolving. When it comes to scalability and speed, TON is still years ahead of everything else in the blockchain realm. It would have been a shame to see this project not benefitting humanity.”

Despite the fact that Telegram is no longer affiliated with the project development, Durov believes with the right “go-to-market strategy, they have all they need to build something epic.”

Telegram is not the only social media platform to suffer resistance with respect to its crypto ambitions from US regulators. Meta Platforms Inc (formerly Facebook) is also battling regulator’s resistance with respect to its Diem Project (formerly christened Libra). While TON has maneuvered with the rebrand to Toncoin which is now trading at $3.44 according to Coingecko data, Facebook Libra has still not seen the light of day.