Тег: TON

Epitaph for TON

When I was asked a year ago whether TON had any prospects, I, as “smart Masha,” reasoned about the network effect and other technical and economic challenges the project needed to overcome to stand a chance—and generally demonstrated my skepticism. The reality turned out to be much simpler and more hopeless: the project was simply banned.

For this very reason, in a recent post about Bitcoin’s rise, I pointed out that Bitcoin’s dominance among cryptocurrencies seems to me to be the only viable scenario. Not because “helicopter money” flowed into Bitcoin, as Grigory Bazhenov tried to present my position, but specifically because Bitcoin is invulnerable to regulators. They can curb its penetration, they can pressure the exchange of Bitcoin for fiat—but they are unable to destroy it. Even if the NSA manages to find and imprison the real Nakamoto—what would that affect? At most, a heap of Bitcoins would be dumped onto the market, but the market would swallow them without choking. However, sanctions against Durov, Zuckerberg, or Buterin are indeed capable of seriously affecting the projects they lead. This link turned out to be the weakest. This is the Achilles’ heel of any potential “Bitcoin killer.”

Of course, all the software developed as part of Durov’s project is open source, and it has already been launched under the name free TON, but it lacks the very network effect that was the main bet and the killer feature of TON—Durov officially stated that he would not support such projects, which means the new free crypto has no hope of being integrated into Telegram.

But every cloud has a silver lining. It was precisely thanks to my review of TON’s capabilities that I became acquainted with Lightning—and I continue to recommend everyone use it. Over the past year, it has become much easier to use, and while the Lightning manual used to take up a separate page on my site, now it is a short paragraph on the donations page.

Durov created a great achievement—VK. It was taken away. He created an even greater one—Telegram. It took off, but it didn’t seem like enough to Pavel. He reached for the greatest of all, and it is not his fault that it didn’t work out. But what is truly bad is that now Durov will have to cover the losses at the expense of Telegram. I hope he has learned lessons from the VK case and will try not to ruin the project.

In Defense of TON

Andrey

I received a detailed review of my answer about TON in the chat , and with the author’s permission, I am publishing it here.

if nothing but Telegram is required to use the coins

Yes, having Telegram will be a sufficient, but not necessary condition for using the coins.

But there will be a need for the ability to buy gram quickly and conveniently for fiat

I don’t think that buying Gram will be harder than buying popular altcoins like Ethereum, especially since the development team has enough resources to organize such exchanges. And considering that identity verification tools are already built into Telegram, this will be even easier from a regulatory compliance perspective.

why is it needed as money, since there are bitcoins themselves

  • Due to high transaction speed: 5 seconds are enough to “confirm” a small amount transaction, compared to several dozen minutes for bitcoin.
  • Even lower fees: a PoS rather than a PoW consensus mechanism is used, so block creators do not have to perform generally useless work calculating hashes (block mining), and end users do not have to pay for it.
  • Built-in support for smart contracts and the ability to create your own applications (services) based on the network itself (the project includes more than just a blockchain) and these smart contracts, accepting grams as payment for their services.

I would still prefer to keep my (long-term) savings in bitcoins, but for everyday use, grams are definitely more convenient. The question “why grams when there are bitcoins” sounds roughly like “why fiat when there is gold”.

Low emission rates

According to the white paper, inflation is expected to be (no more than) 2% per year (the number of existing grams will double in 35 years), through the emission of new grams as rewards for validators.

Indeed, the number of bitcoins is fundamentally limited, and inflation decreases with each new halving, but ultimately the work of miners will be paid for not by the emission of new bitcoins, but by transaction fees, which could lead either to their increase or to a decrease in mining difficulty, and thus, to the overall security of the blockchain.

Firstly, for the sake of high transaction speed, it is intended to keep a very modest number of nodes

It is intended to keep about 1000 validators creating blocks, and as many “full nodes” as desired, which, in particular, will be able to point out validator errors, which, if confirmed, will result in the loss of the deposit and the transfer of part of it to the full node as a reward (the remaining part is irrevocably “burned”). As Nikolai Durov himself writes, despite the large number of full nodes in the bitcoin or ethereum networks, they are privately combined into large pools, which ultimately leads to the fact that, for example, 75% of all new blocks are created by fewer than ten miners/pools. Since it becomes even easier to create pools under a PoS consensus mechanism (those interested simply chip in for a deposit on one server, which then returns part of the reward to them), validators correspond almost exactly to mining pools/large miners. So a system of 1000 validators looks even more decentralized than the current state of affairs in existing cryptocurrencies.

Moreover, at the protocol level, the validator with the largest deposit is prohibited from having more than the deposit of the validator with the minimum deposit multiplied by a certain constant L. Thus, the system itself encourages “pool” participants to choose not the largest validator, but validators with smaller deposits, maintaining decentralization.

If these funds can be managed without Telegram, then it is unclear what Telegram has to do with it.

Funds will be manageable using a set of tools as diverse as those for bitcoin—a “wallet” can be created using existing programs or even by writing your own. Telegram is only involved in that, firstly, TON is being developed by the Telegram team, and secondly, a light client for this entire ecosystem will be built into the Telegram app, which will automatically create a user base of several hundred million people. The network itself is planned to be renamed simply to Open Network a few years after launch.

And, of course, it is currently difficult to consider a currency that depends entirely on a single creator as decentralized

In principle, Ethereum also depends quite heavily on Vitalik Buterin. In fact, in the early stages (while the project is being “refined”), it is indeed planned that the deciding vote in the case of changes to some configurable parameters (of which there are many, by the way, to avoid hard forks) will belong to the TON Foundation, as well as owning the majority of validators. But this is ensured only by the amount of currency in the TON Reserve, which sells and buys grams (in exchange for dollars) according to a pre-set algorithm to reduce possible exchange rate fluctuations. As soon as the majority of grams are sold (which is actually equivalent to the project “taking off,” as the number of sales depends on the rate), the TON Foundation will lose its privileges.

Overall, the essence of the TON project is to create a platform for decentralized and (partially) centralized services that would be impossible to control from the outside—so, besides cryptocurrency, TON will have a built-in proxy system, for example, allowing the creation of tunnels like VPN and TOR and, if desired, collecting payment for traffic passing through them using the built-in cryptocurrency or a micropayment system. Services can provide their offerings using all the conveniences of centralization (more efficient request processing), while users will be protected from contract violations on their part thanks to decentralized smart contracts in the blockchain—and without any (government) courts. That is, the idea is to create a new market uncontrollable by states, and from there it will work itself out.

Have you heard of the TON project? Do you think the future belongs to new-generation blockchains, or will Bitcoin maintain its role as the primary cryptocurrency?

анонимный вопрос

The main factors ensuring Bitcoin’s current dominance:

  1. Network effect. A huge number of people own Bitcoins, and they didn’t receive them through an airdrop, but incurred costs to acquire them, meaning they value them. Since others value them, one can boldly accept payments in Bitcoins; they are liquid.
  2. Low emission rates. The Bitcoin mass increases slowly, meaning that in the long term, this money will at least preserve its value. Thus, Bitcoin is suitable as a store of value; there is no need to rush to get rid of it if someone happens to pay you in bits.
  3. Decentralization. To set up a wallet, you can choose from a multitude of programs or even write one yourself. To transfer money, you don’t need to ask permission from a single transaction verification center—there are several tens of thousands of nodes in the network.

These main factors are enough so that, should you wish, you could easily sell your goods for Bitcoins or, conversely, buy goods with your Bitcoins. Or simply hold bits and enjoy the price growth.

Gram, issued as part of the TON project, will be successful if it can satisfy roughly the same criteria.

  1. Network effect. This could potentially be very large if nothing more than Telegram is required to use the coins, and a ton of people have Telegram. But the ability to buy Gram quickly and conveniently with fiat will be necessary. If buying Gram requires first buying Bitcoins, then it is completely unclear why it is needed as money, since Bitcoins themselves already exist.
  2. Low emission rates. I haven’t looked into the creators’ plans regarding this, but if the growth rate of the Gram mass turns out to be higher than Bitcoin’s, then the price will likely decrease relative to Bitcoin in the long run.
  3. Decentralization. Here, as I understand it, everything is bad. First, to achieve high transaction speeds, it is intended to maintain a very modest number of nodes. Second, if a Telegram account is needed to manage these coins, it means the money is completely centralized: any account can be banned by the Telegram administration at any moment. If these funds can be managed without Telegram, then it’s unclear what Telegram has to do with it.

So I am quite skeptical about TON, but Gram can certainly be used as a speculative asset; hyperinflation definitely does not threaten it.

And, of course, it is currently difficult to consider a currency decentralized if it depends entirely on a single creator