I really like what Pavel mentioned about not using a phone. Essentially, this reflects the concept of "information fasting" in response to the current challenge of information overload, corresponding to the "food fasting" that everyone enjoys. One is metaphysical, the other is physical, but ultimately, both will affect your cortisol and other hormones. In the present and future, attention is the most scarce resource; being able to step away from electronic devices is a luxurious freedom, a freedom with thresholds.
Pavel is also an extreme craftsman. The advantage of a craftsman is that they can lead a small team to create a killer app, but the limitation is that Telegram, as the largest instant messaging software outside of China and the U.S., cannot become another Tencent-like platform. The same culture has also influenced its Web3 project, TON. By the way, as the first Chinese institutional investor in TON, I would like to share my close observations of TON over the past four years.
The technical route has missed the technology tree. TON has stubbornly insisted on using C++, which seems like a form of technical purism. Historically, Russians have often gone in the wrong direction on the "data technology tree": the Soviet Union missed the turn during the transistor revolution, getting lost in optimizing vacuum tube performance and missing the entire chip wave. They often emphasize performance and control to an extreme, while neglecting ecology and developer experience. TON's SDK, toolchain, and documentation ecosystem lack standardization, making the development threshold too high; this is not a syntax issue, but a lack of platform thinking.
The ecological composition is unbalanced. Currently, only Russians and Chinese are active, but resource allocation is clearly biased towards the Russian-speaking community. This is something everyone is familiar with.
Oligarchic monopoly. The funding, traffic, and narrative resources of the ecosystem are concentrated in a few "TOP" companies/projects. Everyone knows they have to curry favor with the "TOP" teams, but mid-tier projects are severely squeezed. There has been a long-term game of chess between the foundation and the oligarchic "TOP" companies, leading to constant internal strife.
Not accepting oneself. It is important for any person or organization to accept themselves and reconcile with themselves; only on this basis can you face yourself and leverage your strengths while avoiding weaknesses. However, TON seems eager to pitch to Musk, persuade American investors, and go to the White House. The fact is, no matter how hard they try, in the eyes of others, TON will always be seen as a public chain with a Russian background. In contrast, BNB did not try to play the "American" role; instead, it first became the chain that everyone in the East 8 Zone enjoyed the most, while also making Westerners feel FOMO, and then smoothly internationalized, which worked very well.
The story of "1 billion user adoption" has been told for four years, but it remains just a story. Pavel keeps telling a grand narrative of "connecting Telegram's billion users with the blockchain world," but this story has yet to truly materialize. The reason is not that the vision is false, but due to structural constraints: Telegram, in order to survive and ensure Pavel's personal safety (in recent years, Pavel has become increasingly paranoid about his physical safety, especially after several incidents, including the recent one in France), must maintain a "superficial" separation from TON to avoid regulatory red lines; this disconnection prevents TON from fully integrating with Telegram's ecosystem. Even stablecoins like USDE have their issuance stuck at a few hundred million levels—indicating that the story is grand, but the realization is small.
TON has the perfectionism of engineering geeks but lacks the warmth of ecological collaboration; it has a large entry point but is blocked by regulatory realities; it has its own advantages but has not reconciled with itself. There is narrative and idealism, but it also needs to be transformed into a sustainable balance of systems and incentives.
Wishing the TON ecosystem to get better and better.
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