Telegram has announced that it is ending its blockchain project. The project was called Telegram Open Network, and it also went by TON. It made the announcement in May 2020. The TON testing network had been in operation for about one year. In an update released on July 6, Telegram explained through its official TON development group that it will discontinue any additional support for the test network. The remaining TON validation setup will be shut off no later than August 1. The TON spokesperson recommended that all of the participants save their relevant data and halt their test processes.

Although the test network is set to close shop in less than one month, participants in the network will still have a way to continue experimenting after the network is terminated. If they want to do that, they can install a set of their own test network validation algorithms. This is described in more detail in three different documents. Those documents have all of the guidelines for the Full Node setup, the Validator processes and the Test Gram units.

The test network was launched on September 6, 2019. It was set up for an explorer and a piece of node software. The Telegram company set up an alpha version of an iOS wallet that would work with the native token. This token was called the Gram. However, Telegram's TON plans never completely came to fruition. This is because the United States Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States all of a sudden said that Telegram’s $1.7 billion initial coin offering was illegal in the middle of October 2019.

Telegram fought a long battle with the American regulators. It agreed to shut down its TON network and give back $1.2 billion to its investors. This is in line with a final settlement that was approved by the United States courts. Telegram's CEO, Pavel Durov, made an official announcement on June 25 that the firm had already made more than $1.2 billion in reimbursements to its investors. Other coin operators should keep an eye on these processes for further information.