Spectator highlights:

*To understand Telegram's currency Gram, you must understand its founder Pavel Durov (Paul Durov), a rebellious young man with liberal ideas. Compared with Pavel, Zuckerberg's rebellion is only reflected in the pullover .

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(He made this gesture after his first social networking site, VK, was acquired by a Putin cronies company)

*Pavel has the experience of being exiled by the Russian government, and his absolute pursuit of user privacy makes it impossible for Telegram to adjust the government’s request for a data backdoor. This kind of “disobedience” will make Telegram an alternative—the digital currency it was born The same goes for Grams.

Wen Sandao

Publisher

Public account ID: hi-starcoin

If you have experienced the upsurge of Libra not long ago, you will not miss the next one, which is Gram.

Somewhat similar to Libra initiated by Facebook, Gram is issued by another social platform, Telegram. The difference is that Facebook is the world's largest social platform, while Telegram ranks outside the top ten. Compared with Facebook's 2.3 billion global users, Telegram only has 200 million, but this company is as famous as Facebook.

If you are already in the Chinese currency circle, you may have used the Chinese version of the telegram group. The biggest difference between it and WeChat is that you can form a group of 200,000 people-equivalent to the population of a small country.

In addition to this difference, users of the Telegram group may not realize that Telegram is actually a pioneer in encryption technology and decentralization. When it was founded in 2013, it was able to realize end-to-end encryption of information, and set information in real time or at regular intervals. With the destroy function, a third party, even the manager of Telegram, cannot view the user's information.

But the other side of the story is that some terrorists, drug traffickers, and demonstrators tend to prefer to choose Telegram to communicate. Including the demonstrations in Hong Kong not long ago, Telegram was the main communication tool because the government could not monitor it.

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(Have the ladies and sisters of the Star Coin been overwhelmed by Pavel?)

Pavel is a handsome young man born in the 1980s with great personality. He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and studied at the Sports Institute of St. Petersburg State University. In 2013, he co-founded Russia's largest social networking site VKontakte ("VK") with his brother Nikolai Durov.

Later, the Putin government realized the power of social tools in the demonstration groups, and mail.ru, a company close to the Putin government, began to secretly acquire 48% of the company’s shares from other VK shareholders, although Pavel said that this was not legal because he He and other shareholders have the right of first refusal on these shares, but he does not know it.

Under pressure, Pavel, who had lost control, resigned from the position of VK CEO, sold his shares, sold all his assets, and left Russia with an elite technical team. The media called it "exile".

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(Buffalo, NY, source/Heretics)

Pavel also set up his own group in the Telegram group, with 160,000 people in it. He came out to send a long text at important moments or when he wanted to say something.

In a message released in June this year, he said that he is a very self-disciplined person who does not smoke, drink coffee, eat meat, do not take medicine, and do not eat fast food. A year ago, he added More restrictive entries, no gluten, no dairy, no eggs, no fructose, and these health philosophies are for creativity and sanity.

To exercise his willpower, he swims in icy water in Finland or Switzerland in winter. "If you regularly spend a few minutes in a lake with a thin layer of ice, you won't be so procrastinating when it comes to starting a boring but necessary project."

In that information release, he said that in order to exercise his willpower and self-discipline, he planned to drink only water and not eat any food in the next week.

The biggest difference from Zuckerberg is that when Facebook’s Libra sought support everywhere to adapt to the US government’s regulatory intervention, Pavel chose to refuse. He is considered a representative of liberal will, which also made him involved in politics. swirl.

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(This portrait of a saint is a bit scary no matter how you look at it)

When VKontakte was investigated by the Russian Federation, Pavel realized that he was involved in unnecessary politics. He realized that his phone communication with his brother was probably monitored. After leaving Russia, the two brothers decided to start a The social tool that truly protects user privacy is Telegram.

When Russian authorities asked Facebook to shut down the pages of some dissenters, Zuckerberg agreed, and Pavel quipped on Twitter that "Facebook has neither courage nor principle", saying that he would never accept these demands from the government .

WhatsApp, acquired by Facebook, also launched end-to-end encryption for Android texts in 2014. Pavel ridiculed it many times, saying that WhatsApp sucks and it will never be able to protect user privacy.

Telegram users are growing rapidly. On January 24, 2014, within 5 days after Facebook acquired WhatsApp, the number of Telegram users increased by 8 million, mainly due to users' concerns about Facebook data security.

In March 2018, Telegram's monthly active users had reached 200 million. Pavel claims that Telegram is growing by 500,000 users every day. On March 14 this year, Pavel said that in the past 24 hours, another 3 million users signed up for Telegram.

In January 2018, Telegram decided to develop its own public chain TON and issue digital currency Gram. Pavel's brother Nicola is a programmer and mathematician. He has won gold medals in the International Mathematical Olympiad and the International Informatics (Computer) Competition for many times. He developed the MTProto protocol for Telegram, which is also considered to be Telegram's blockchain. Author of the white paper on the technology platform TON (Telegram Open Network).

In early 2018, Gram launched a private placement. Although some Wall Street financial leaders refused to invest in this free-willed youth, well-known American venture capital Benchmark and Lightspeed Capital, as well as many Russian investors still participated in the private placement of Gram. Soon, Gram completed a financing of 170 million US dollars, which became the ICO project with the highest financing amount in the world at that time.

Cryptocurrency analyst Tone Vay commented on Gram, "I think Telegram's Gram token is a small scam."

Indeed, Gram is different from Libra. Libra is anchored to a variety of legal currencies and is a stable currency. However, Gram is not anchored to any asset rights and interests. At best, it is an "air currency" that can be used by 200 million Telegram users in the future.

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(then post this)

This feedback annoyed Putin, leading to the subsequent acquisition. In Russia, government pressure made Pavel feel the importance of personal threats and privacy. This kind of experience made this rebellious youth completely become a free will.

Today, Telegram operates as a non-profit organization and does not push advertisements to users, and Telegram's income mainly comes from donations. The main donor so far is Pavel himself.

Pavel's funds mainly come from the equity transfer of VK company. At that time, the two Pavel brothers held shares in VK that were estimated to be 400-500 million US dollars, and the Telegram team needed about 1 million US dollars in expenses every month. The experience of the VK company being invaded also made the Pavel brothers decide not to sell any shares in Telegram.

Telegram's code is open source. Huo Ju, an early blockchain practitioner, once studied their code and commented that "the designed protocol MTProto is extremely good, with the beauty of both mathematics and engineering. Its encryption foundation is very complete, and at the same time, it is excellent in engineering. ", on Github, the number of contributors to each project code of Telegram is small, but the quality is very high.

Today, Telegram finally has the first large amount of funds from the outside world, which is the ICO funds. Would a rebellious youth who had been expelled by the government and would not sell any shares go the full compliance route like Facebook? I (Starcoin, ID: hi-starcoin) think absolutely not. Since Telegram will not obey the government to open the back door of data to them, this closes the last door with the government, and the previous handshake becomes dispensable. Therefore, Telegram will not establish a compliance model between digital currency and traditional finance like Facebook.

Facebook's Libra is anchored to the value of multi-national legal currencies, forming a stable currency price mechanism for transfers and payments between Facebook's 2.3 billion users. The same goes for Gram, which will be used by the growing number of Telegram users for their purchases, payments for goods, and fun little features like small bets on future events.

Gram is a token of Telegram, with profound Telegram characteristics, that is, security, privacy, and freedom. Those users who do not want others to know their assets and flow can choose Gram payment. It is neither linked to asset rights nor bound to legal currency. Compared with many air coins, this is just an "air coin" with payment scenarios. It is a purer digital currency that is only supported by consensus.

But freedom is a double-edged sword, and more drug traffickers and terrorists will tend to gather on Telegram. Pavel once said that Telegrams are heavily encrypted and privacy-oriented, but we are not friends with terrorists. On the other side of privacy protection, he also chose to open a window to the government. If the government provides evidence to prove the identity of the terrorist, they are willing to provide his information.

According to Gram's commitment to ICO, before October 31st, TON's main network will be launched, and Gram's currency must be able to run on TON's main network. At the end of last month, it was the TON testnet testing stage, nodes were invited to download the code and start internal testing. Whether TON can be put into operation before October 31 does not seem to be a big suspense for Telegram, because it is difficult for Telegram to return such a large amount of funds of 1.7 billion US dollars, which may have been partially used for technology research and development and Trial operation, even if Pavel has the funds to return the money, he will not be so stupid as to ruin Telegram's future in the blockchain industry-especially a company with its own decentralized genes.

According to the information released by the TON Chinese community, as early as the beginning of 2018, Gram was traded on Lbank, Biss, BiHODL, CoinBene, CoinEx, BitForex, Liquid, Xena, Cross Exchange, TONBUS OTC, but the purchases on these exchanges were Gram futures can be converted to spot and traded after the TON mainnet goes live.

We (starcoin, official account ID: hi-starcoin) searched these exchanges, and there is a trading pair of Grams/ETH on Lbank, the price is about 1.13 US dollars, and the latest transaction price on Biss is 1.83 US dollars, But basically no liquidity. In December 2017, Gram was sold to traditional investment institutions at a private placement price of $0.37, and to digital currency investment institutions at a price of $1.03 in January 2018. After the mainnet goes live, ordinary investors can trade directly, except for those investors who are agreed to hold for a long time.

At that time, will the Gram price rise sharply because the owner is a special social platform? have no idea. But what we do know is that many people have enough enthusiasm for Libra, which makes Gram seem too low-key. Gram is a typical payment tool that will be used in the telgram platform and Gram wallet in the future. I am afraid that Pavel has not explained to the outside world how a tool should work.

Tone is not the only one who scolds Gram as a "little scam", and some people will continue to suspect that Gram is an air currency, but I (Starcoin News, official account ID: hi-starcoin) want to say that this "little scam" is very exciting, Looking forward to the sequel to Gram.