Pavel Durov, the founder of the popular messenger Telegram is announcing closure of the TON blockchain project, TASS reported.
“We are announcing the discontinuation of our blockchain project,” he wrote in the Telegram.
Any project based on TON or using its name will not be related to the Telegram, Durov added.
The community of Telegram Open Network (TON) developers has earlier announced that it will launch its own Free TON blockchain project.
“The US court declared that Grams couldn’t be distributed not only in the United States, but globally. Why? Because, it said, a US citizen might find some way of accessing the TON platform after it launched So, to prevent this, Grams shouldn’t be allowed to be distributed anywhere in the world – even if every other country on the planet seemed to be perfectly fine with TON,” the announcement said.
In the post, Durov explicitly criticized the U.S. government’s involvement and efforts to prevent the launch of a project based on principles of decentralization pioneered by Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), CoinTelegraph reported.
Reiterating his recent negative remarks about the U.S., Durov wrote that the global community is still dependent on the U.S. when it comes to finance and technology. “Unfortunately, we – the 96% of the world’s population living elsewhere — are dependent on decision-makers elected by the 4% living in the U.S.,” he added.
Telegram CEO also emphasized that the court decision breaks sovereignty of jurisdictions around the world, saying:
“This court decision implies that other countries don’t have the sovereignty to decide what is good and what is bad for their own citizens. If the U.S. suddenly decided to ban coffee and demanded coffee shops in Italy be closed because some American might come there – we doubt anyone would agree.”
