The TON blockchain platform was launched without Pavel Durov and Telegram.

[Bliznec]

On May 7, 2020 at 15:00, the TON Labs https://tonlabs.io/ startup published in the public domain on GitHub https://github.com/tonlabs the main components of the TON OS operating system - the infrastructure necessary to work with the Free TON blockchain.
In particular, published:
- implementation of a full TON node in Rust,
- Command line interface,
- smart contract TON Multisignature Wallet,
- scripts and dock containers for running TON validators.
The startup claims that Telegram has nothing to do with the launch. Due to legal difficulties, Telegram can no longer participate in the development of TON, however, the open source software they have developed can be freely used without restrictions.
Within a month, the Surf Decentralized Browser, TON Cash Token and DePool Decentralized Betting Pool were released.
All components will be available under free licenses, and the startup TON Labs itself has become a sponsor of the Free Software Foundation.
In total, 5 billion TON will be issued https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/07/05/2020/5eb3f1429a79470728554a3f , Dmitry Goroshevsky, CTO of TON Labs, told RBC. Of this amount, 85% will be received by partners and network users for free, 10% - by developers, 5% - by validators (they will participate in confirming transactions). 85% of the "User" will be distributed through the referral program to attract new users to the blockchain platform.
TON Cash employs over 60 developers. The startup was founded in 2018 by entrepreneurs Alexander Filatov, Mitya Goroshevsky, Dmitry Malyugin and Pavel Prigolovko. They originally planned to develop tools for the Telegram TON ecosystem (The Open Network). Apparently, this platform is now moving into an open placement and will not be associated in any way with Telegram, Pavel Durov and investors who have invested about $ 1.7 billion in TON to receive tokens. Now investors are returning from 72% to 110% of their investments.
The Telegram team stated from the outset that the TON platform will be open source and open: “After the launch of the Telegram platform, it will take the same position as any other party regarding TON,” they said ahead of the hearings at which the US Court of Justice prohibited issuance of Gram at the request of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Now hearings are ongoing, and the status of the "official" crypto platform remains unclear.
Technically, Free TON is the same TON blockchain platform developed by the Telegram team and its partners, which is supposed to provide millions of transactions per second, reliable cryptography, and support for distributed services such as hosting TON Sites.
More than 170 members of the Free TON https://ton.surf/main community signed the "Declaration on Decentralization", in which they stated their position on the development of the Free TON platform. Among them are cryptocurrency exchanges Kuna and CEX.IO, investment companies Dokia Capital and Bitscale Capital.
The founder of the Kuna crypto exchange, Mikhail Chobanyan, said that according to the terms of the community, which they accepted, there will be no TON trading yet.
“But we have a lot of payment products that we plan to add a token to, for example, token distribution services through our platforms. At some stage, it will be possible to pay with TON tokens in retail, we already have integration. But this is all in the future. "
It is not yet entirely clear how the Free TON https://forum.freeton.org/ platform will be integrated into the Telegram messenger.

[TomPluz]

I have supported Free TON here in this forum and I believe that it got a good future, judging on its infrastructure and the people behind it. While there are so many new projects on the horizon, only a few are really bringing in useful innovations that can last the test of time, and I am sure that TON is one of these few.

[robert20]

It can make big achievements if its get the attention it deserves.Its comcept is really good and the developers of the project are also working hard to make it work better. It is offering so many features and use cases. I also support the project.

[Jaephoenix]

Since the creation and dissolution of the original TON Network, I have been confused by the numerous factions of ton themed projects that have popped up. The latest is the Free TON that has it's own telegram and website community. I hope they fix themselves up

[Bliznec]

TON Labs received $ 6 million following the investment round. Dmitry Chikhachev, general partner of Runa Capital, noted that TON Labs is the first blockchain project in the fund's portfolio: https://hub.forklog.com/ton-labs-poluchila-6-mln-po-itogam-investraunda/ Previously, the company has invested in companies in the technology sector - Datadog, EPAM, Yandex, Ozon and others.