Inside Telegram's secretive TON blockchain network

The Telegram Open Network, or TON, is Telegram’s upcoming Proof-of-Stake network that promises to integrate blockchain payments into its messaging app that serves some 365 million users. If it delivers on promises of high speeds and decentralization, it will be the largest blockchain launch in history.

TON’s slated to launch by October 31, having raised $1.7 billion in a private ICO for its native token, GRAM. But the project has been shrouded in mystery from its conception; with little information, no regulation, and barely any acknowledgment by Telegram itself. It’s anyone’s guess how things will go.

But earlier this month, Telegram released the source code for the TON blockchain. With it, 450,000 lines of code, and several hundred pages of documentation, including a new whitepaper, detailed technical guides to the TON blockchain and the TON Virtual Machine, and a guide to Fift, a programming language created for TON. 

It’s the first time TON’s code has been released to the public. TON began closed testing in April 2019, but developers could only access TON through a client that connected to a single node, according to Russian news outlet Vedemosti. Now, there are 100 nodes operated by Telegram, many more by TON, and developers can use the code to create their own nodes. It’s the first public major stress test of the network, and developers are finally getting their hands on it. 

Facebook’s David Marcus: Libra is no threat to sovereign fiat currencies

France, Germany, China, the United States—and just about every other country on Earth—they’ve all got Libra all wrong, according to Facebook’s David Marcus.

And the former PayPal executive, who now serves as one of the lead developers of Facebook’s Libra project, is once again coming out in defense of his crypto baby. 

In a series of tweets, Marcus attempted to put to rest the various fears raised by governments around the world by explaining that the notion of Libra negatively affecting the “monetary sovereignty of nations” is wrong for several reasons.

For one thing, he said, Libra is built to run atop a system of already existing currencies, not to replace them. He explained that Libra will itself be backed by several forms of fiat. So, in order for Libra to exist, it must have the “equivalent value” of these currencies “in its reserves.” 

Here are the biggest stories in the cryptoverse:

• Binance makes first investment in China since leaving in 2017. 
• Mastercard and Visa invest in crypto fintech firm Plaid.
• Binance holds more than $3 billion of customers' crypto.
• Ripple backed Coil teams up with Mozilla for $100 million content creators fund.

Hedera Hashgraph launches public mainnet beta

What you need to know

Hedera Hashgraph, a new type of distributed ledger technology that promises speeds and transaction costs that leave Ethereum and Bitcoin in the dust, announced today the public launch of its mainnet beta. The mainnet beta is open to anyone from the general public, following a closed beta that was previously only accessible to developers who were building on the platform. 

Why it's important

Hedera’s beta will throttle speeds to 10,000 transactions per second and plans to increase them throughout the rest of 2019, a strategy it said is better for security. Ethereum, by comparison, can handle roughly 15 transactions per second. Hedera’s beta will also offer a smart contract and file storage service, although transactions on these services are throttled to 10 transactions a second. Developers can also now run mirror nodes, which provide public records of all the consensus decisions on the ledger. 

NBA player tokenizes his own contract

Sports and crypto—an unlikely partnership that seemingly grows closer by the day.

Late last week, The Athletic reported that Brooklyn Nets point guard Spencer Dinwiddie is taking his latest contract extension, worth $34 million, and turning it into a securitized “digital investment vehicle.”

In other words, Dinwiddie is launching an STO in himself, offering investors a piece of his own contract.

According to a Fox News report, the point guard plans to sell thousands of digital tokens tied to the contract and use the money to make other investments and develop new streams of income. Those who buy in will be paid back principal and interest, according to the report.

Read more here.