On September 6, Telegram released its Telegram Open Network (TON) testnet explorer and node software on its website, two months ahead of its planned launch of the Gram Digital Currency. As TON is Telegram’s blockchain project which has entered the last preparation stage before going live.
It has been reported that on August 28, three unidentified investors in Telegram’s $1.7 billion private initial coin offering had said that Telegram confirmed that it would issue the first Gram tokens by October.
At the same time, the investors said that the long-term goal for executives is to make Gram available to all of Telegram’s roughly 300 million users.
Now, developers and community members interested in the messaging application provider’s blockchain who can start kicking the tires of a full node, a validator node, and the blockchain explorer.
Node Software
According to Vedomosti, a Russian news outlet, TON’s node software, and all relevant documentation were to be released to the public on September 1. This first version of the blockchain is expected to feature sharing and various functional consensus mechanisms. Actually, the release had been previously scheduled for September 1, as mentioned earlier, according to the sources familiar with the project’s progress, but was delayed a few days for unclear reasons.
Mitja Goroshevsky, the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of TON said :
“Source code for a full node that can access testnet, create and validate blocks has been released. Lite client was released several months ago. TON Labs will release Public Beta of its developer tools suite on Monday.”
<img width="1024" height="558" src="https://www.cryptonewspoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Telegram-Announces-Estimated-Release-Date-for-Platform-and-Token-Launch-compressor-1024x558.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-1223 lazyload" />
Telegram Messaging Application
It has also been reported that Telegram launched a private beta testing of the TON blockchain to a limited number of global developers in April. Two anonymous testers disclosed at the time that the blockchain demonstrated an extremely high transaction speed.
The mainnet launch for the Telegram Open Network is set to happen no later than Oct. 31.
So, according to TON Labs, the TON blockchain will be compatible with ethereum-based software.