Founder of Telegram: Taking “freedom of speech” as his mission and regards Musk as his comrade-in-arms

author:starzq ;Source: Web3Brand

When I was communicating with Yan Xin last week, he recommended that I must check out Telegram founder Pavel Durov (Pavel Durov) this year with Tucker Carlson (a rare three-hour face-to-face interview), after reading it, you can deeply understand the mission of Telegram and the value of TON to Telegram. Why does he need to Bullish Ton ecosystem, because TON is indeed an indispensable part of Telegram.

So I read this interview and I really understood Telegram and Ton:

• Pavel Durov’s growth experience has made him pursue freedom all his life, and he also hopes to create a platform to make others feel freedom;

• Telegram’s mission is to create a platform that allows users to “free speech”;

• Ton’s Value to Telegram: Ton YesAlmost the only way to build profitability under its values, guarantee Telegram’s mission of “freedom of speech” and help it develop sustainably.

Below is the essence of the interview I compiled, and it also adds some background information / Comments / analysis of TON, which is divided into 5 parts, Enjoy

1. Pavel Durov’s growth experience (elite family, centralization → capitalism, talented teenagers, experimental schools, computer programming, Russian-Ukrainian conflict, defending freedom of speech) prompted Pavel to go out and yearn for freedom

2. The birth of Telegram is based on a streamlined and efficient small team (the best in all kinds of global competitions) to develop excellent features to bring rapid tap water growth

3. Pavel Durov starts a digital nomad life and finally chooses Dubai as Telegram headquarters

4. To remain neutral, Telegram has no external shareholders, but at hundreds of millions of dollars in operating costs each year, it must explore a profit model based on protecting user privacy. This is what TON means for Telegram

5. Some interesting points: The biggest pressure comes from the US government, Apple and Google, how to treat surveillance, secure hardware communication devices

1. Pavel Durov’s growth experience (elite family, centralization → capitalism, talented teenagers, experimental schools, computer programming, Russian-Ukrainian conflict, defending freedom of speech) prompted Pavel to go out and yearn for freedom

• Pavel Durov was born in October 1984 (an interesting year) in a family of scholars in the former Soviet Union and witnessed the problems of the Soviet centralization system;

• When he moved to Italy with his family at the age of 4, everything he observed there was in stark contrast to his experience in the Soviet Union, believing that capitalism and free market systems were better than centralization.The education he received in Italy also made him a part of Europe.

• Time in Italy was full of fun for him and his brother

• Nikolai Durov, at the age of 10, was a live broadcast of cubic equations on Italian television as a prodigy, and was considered impossible in Italy at the time;

• When Pavel first started school, he didn’t know a word of Italian, and the teacher didn’t like him.As a result, he became the second place in the class at the end of the first school year, and even won the first place in the second school year.This experience made him fall in love with a competitive environment and firmly believed that as long as he worked hard, he could achieve excellent results.

• The relatively loose Russia in the 1990s (after the collapse of the Soviet Union): Because my father was a famous scholar and writer who studied ancient Roman literature, he was invited to be the head of the Department of Classical Linguistics, School of Language and Literature, St. Petersburg State University.Russia is different from Italy, but Pavel enjoys it because some experimental schools in Russia in the 1990s will educate you comprehensively. He learned six foreign languages ​​and his math courses are also very professional.

• The Pavel family brought back an IBM PC XT computer from Italy in the early 1990s, and they became one of the few families in Russia who could teach themselves to program.Pavel is also very passionate about programming, launching an electronic library called Durov.com for humanities majoring in the Internet, and creating an Internet forum at the University of St. Petersburg at SPBGU.RU, inviting teachers and students from different departments.Have a discussion.Then he graduated from university at the age of 21 (September 2006) and started VK, a company known as the “Russian version of Facebook.”VK grew rapidly, surpassing its rival Odnoklassniki in December 2008 to become Russia’s most popular social networking service, with value growing to $3 billion.

• VK has been having a series of problems since 2011.Because of compliance with “freedom of speech”, VK became a tool for Russian protesters to organize gatherings, rejecting the Russian government (Putin)’s need to close opposition communities and stick to the freedom of speech and freedom of assembly that they believe in.Similar protests occurred in Ukraine in 2013, and Pavel once again rejected the Russian government’s request for personal information from users protesting Ukrainians.At this time, Pavel faces a dilemma: succumb to the Russian government, or sell his shares.Durov chose the latter and left Russia in 2014. He yearned for freedom and was unwilling to be directed.

• Carlson finished off Mark Zuckerberg and Prague Agarwal (former head of operations at Twitter) worked with the government to review public information.

• Supplement 1: In 2011, when the government asked the pages of opposition politicians to be removed after the Duma election, Pavel Durov posted a photo of a hoodie in a hoodie, sticking out his tongue and text “That’s my answer, letting the world know that he won’t succumb to pressure.

• Supplement 2: In March 2022, Pavel said: “From my mom’s side, I can trace back to the family genealogy in Kiev. Her maiden surname is Ukrainian surname (Ivanirenko), and until today we haveMany relatives. ” This may also be one of the reasons why Pavel defends Ukrainian users’ personal information.

Pavel Durov is the best

• Father: Valery Durov, a famous scholar and writer who studies ancient Roman literature. He was the secretary of the party organization of the Leningrad State University in the Soviet era. In the late 1980s, he was invited to Italy to teach Russian..After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he was invited to return to the Faculty of Language and Literature of St. Petersburg State University as the head of the Department of Classical Linguistics.

• Mother: Albina Durova, from Kiev, Ukraine, teaches at St. Petersburg State University.

• Brother: Nikolai Durov, a genius who is proficient in mathematics and computer science

• In 1996, 1997 and 1998, he won gold medals in the 3 consecutive International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO);

• From 1995 to 1998, he won three silver medals and one gold medal in the four consecutive International Olympics of Informatics (IOI);

• As a member of the ACM team at St. Petersburg State University, he won the International College Programming Competition (ACM ICPC) Finals for 2 consecutive years in 2000 and 2001, and only 10 people in the world have achieved this achievement;

• He received his first PhD from St. Petersburg State University in 2005 and his second PhD from Bonn University in 2007

• Pavel Durov’s right-hand man, serving as CTO for VK and Telegram

Replenish:

• Pavel Durov’s growth experience reminded me of CZ Zhao Changpeng.CZ Both parents are teachers, and their father is a professor, and he is also a highly educated family.Shortly after CZ was born, his father was deported for a while by the “high-level bourgeois intellectual”.

• In the late 1980s, 12-year-old Zhao Changpeng immigrated to Vancouver, Canada with his parents.When Zhao Changpeng went to college, he chose McGill University in Montreal to study computer science, which started his programming career.

• CZ is also a standard “world citizen”. On average, he lives in another city every five years. He has lived in mainland China, Canada, Japan, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, and Singapore.

• CZ’s sister Jessica Zhao is also excellent, and was once the managing director of Morgan Stanley.

2. The birth of Telegram is based on a streamlined and efficient small team (the best in various global competitions) to develop excellent features, bringing rapid tap water growth

• In his last days in Russia, because of various experiences (armed police tried to break into his house), Pavel realized that every communication tool was not safe, but needed to contact his brother, and developed a good encryption feature.The idea of ​​information application, which is the current Telegram (launched on iOS version on August 14, 2013)

• Pavel is mainly responsible for writing user interfaces, and his brother designed Telegram’s encryption algorithm.MTProto protocol(It is still in use today), driving the trend of “encrypted information application”.

• Telegram team is very simple and efficient

• Based on this TON’s original white paper, we can find that half of Telegram’s engineering team are employees of the original VK, and they are also the best in various global competitions (International College Programming Competition ACM ICPC, International Mathematics Olympiad IMO, International College Data Competition, Top Coder Contest)

• The engineer team has only 30 people, but they are all very capable, just like the Navy SEALs

• Without the hr department, a platform (contest.com) was created to hold engineer competitions (monthly or every two months) and select the best engineers to post offers.

• Pavel is the sole owner, director and product manager of the company, and most of the features he proposed and worked directly with every engineer and designer responsible for implementing these functions (Carlson was shocked)

• The secret to staying streamlined and efficient: independence

• He once told Jack Dorsey (co-founder of Twitter) that 20 people on Twitter is enough.Jack agreed, but the problem is that once a massive layoff starts, it will upset Wall Street, retaining these employees is just to maintain the share price.

• So Elon needs to privatize Twitter first to lay off 80% of its employees

• So what are the benefits of going public?Pavel thought for a while and replied that it would be more efficient to raise funds.Therefore, if you use tokens to raise funds, you can also achieve high efficiency and create a new evaluation system, rather than the current short-term quarterly financial report system

• Telegram registers 250w per day, and the growth rate is very fast.No marketing investment, total spontaneous growth, 900 million monthly active users

• Jobs has a similar view, not sure if it affects Pavel: *We believe that if we keep launching great products to our customers, they will continue to pull out their wallets.(*Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets)

• Pavel believes that the essential reason is that “Telegram products are done well. Users are very smart and like to use good things, not bad products. Once users have used them for a while, they find that all the functions of Telegram, including speed and security, will notLeave, and invite his friends to join. These people will realize that the communication tools they used before are 5-6 years behind.”

• The logo of a paper plane comes from an anecdote:

• Pavel gave VK a big bonus, but the vice president replied that what is important to him is the mission rather than money, so they both folded the money into paper planes and threw it downstairs.

3. Pavel Durov starts a digital nomad life and finally choose Dubai as Telegram headquarters

• Pavel traveled to Berlin, Singapore, London, and San Francisco, and finally chose Dubai as the headquarters of Telegram.

• Reasons for not choosing Berlin: There are too many bureaucratic obstacles to overcome

• Germany: You cannot hire employees directly from outside the EU.You must first publish a job advertisement in local newspapers and magazines. If no German and EU engineers apply for a job within 6 months, you can hire employees outside the EU.

• San Francisco: I used to think I would stay there because a lot of tech companies were there.Two things to make Pavel reconsider

• Every time Pavel goes to the United States, there will be 2 FBI agents greeting him and asking questions at the airport.

• Once at 9 a.m., he was having breakfast in a rented house in the United States. The FBI suddenly appeared and asked about his current situation details.

• Even once he took an engineer to the United States, someone tried to hire the engineer without his knowledge, and let the engineer use a specific open source library on telegram (conveniently being used as a backdoor)

• The first is security issues: Pavel was attacked on his way back to the hotel after visiting Jack Dorsey on Twitter.When he tweeted “I just met Jack Dorsey” on his phone, he was snatched away by three big men, but Pavel struggled to snatch it back and ran away.This shocked him, and it was the only city and country where he was attacked on the streets.

• Second, he has received too much attention from the FBI and various security agencies, “This may not be the environment for us.”

• Finally chose Dubai

• Comment: Although Singapore is relatively neutral, many people think it is also a hidden danger to be too close to the mainland.

• You can recruit employees around the world, and it is very convenient to apply for a residence permit

• Very good tax policy

• The infrastructure is great.You only need to pay the minimum tax and you can enjoy many quality facilities: roads, airports, hotels

• They came to Dubai 7 years ago. At first, they only wanted to live for half a year, but they didn’t leave

• It’s very convenient to do business in Dubai

• More importantly, this is a neutral country, a small country that wants to establish friendly relations with everyone, without being bound to any big country, which is the best choice for a neutral platform like telegram

• In the seven years they have been here, although there have been some frictions in neighboring countries, the UAE has never asked Telegram to review user data, which is in stark contrast to previous experiences.

fun fact

• After having experience in Russia and the United States, Pavel said that he would only go to places that are consistent with their values ​​and would not enter major powers such as China, Russia, and the United States.This interview was also conducted in Telegram’s Dubai office.

• After leaving Russia, Pavel obtained citizenship in the country by donating $250,000 to the Sugar Diversification Fund in St. Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean, Central America (visa-free travel in more than 100 countries, including the UK) and received $300 million in cash from Swiss Bank, allowing him to focus on creating Telegram.

• After the outbreak of the new crown, the tourism industry in St. Kitts and Nevis was hit, lowering the threshold for investment immigration. Forbes also published an article titled “Pavel Durov: Caribbean countries have lowered their citizenship due to the epidemic.price”

• Pavel currently has citizenship in 4 countries: Russia, St. Kitts and Nevis, France, the United Arab Emirates

4. To remain neutral, Telegram has no external shareholders, but at hundreds of millions of dollars in operating costs each year, it must explore a profit model based on protecting user privacy. This is what TON means for Telegram

• After learning from VK’s lessons (sold to Russia by capital control), Telegram did not introduce third-party investment institutions in order to maintain independence in the early days because its mission of pursuing “freedom of speech” is not necessarily consistent with investment institutions.

• At the same time, Pavel can provide funds for the early operation of Telegram: 10 years ago his bank account and Bitcoin were hundreds of millions (1.5 million US dollars 10 years ago, with an average price of US$750, he bought 2,000 Bitcoins);I didn’t buy any real estate, airplanes or yachts, and I don’t think this method is suitable for him.The first thing in life is his freedom, and once you buy something, he will be bound to somewhere, and his entire energy is on Telegram

• But Telegram has an annual operating cost of hundreds of millions of dollars as its number of users increases (with $700 million in debt in 2021), and it is impossible to rely on Pavel to provide operating funds all the time.So I tried a series of fundraising methods.Pavel mentioned bond issuance, but what is more important is that he tried blockchain twice (Pavel didn’t talk much about this part, maybe because of the previous SEC, I hope to keep a low profile. The following parts are my additions):

• The ICO was stopped by the SEC in the first quarter of 2020, and Telegram returned the funds to TON investors and paid a fine of $18.5 million to the SEC.

• In January 2018, Telegram announced the launch“Telegram Open Network”(TON), a high-performance blockchain that hopes to expand to millions of transactions per second, providing Telegram’s more than 500 million users at that time with fast and secure decentralized payments, digital identity and other services.$1.7 billion was raised through an initial token offering (ICO) to fund its construction.Participants included Silicon Valley’s biggest investment companies such as Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, Kleiner Perkins and Lightspeed, while not selling any shares in Telegram.

• In March 2021, Telegram issued $1 billion in bonds with an annual interest rate of 7-8% (looks like an emergency response to the ICO stop)

• After the ICO was stopped by the SEC, Pavel handed over control of TON to the “community”, an open source developer team called NewTON took over the project and renamed it to the TON (The Open Network) Foundation in 2021

• TON was on the exchange in the fourth quarter of 2021, when the price was around $0.8.

• In August 2023, Telegram launched a TON-based crypto wallet during the Token2049 event in Singapore, which is available to 900 million users worldwide.At this point, Toncoin’s price has also begun to soar, with FDV and Market Cap entering the Top 10

At this point, we should no longer doubt the close relationship between Telegram and TON (btw, the white paper author of Telegram Open Network is Pavel’s brother Nikolai, and also the CTO of Telegram). TON can build a powerful and powerful foundation for Telegram to protect user privacy.A healthy profit model:

• The profit model of Internet platforms can be divided into the following types: advertising, physical sales of e-commerce, value-added services (virtual item sales, membership), and financial services;

• Advertising has created major profits for social networks such as Facebook/Instagram, but Pavel Durov has been known for not liking to ads since the VK era. On the one hand, it will expose user privacy data and directly conflict with Telegram’s mission, and on the other hand, user experiencenot good;

• Currently, Telegram has opened ads based on channel subscriptions, but because it cannot open user privacy data, it will affect the accuracy of advertising delivery, and it is difficult to create large-scale revenue in a short period of time;

• Returning to the essence, Telegram is fundamentally different from Alibaba, Tencent, and Facebook. Telegram has a vision of “freedom of speech” and cares about anti-censorship and decentralization.Telegram benchmarks itself into the international version of WeChat, and they also have similar product forms, so we can make a comparison reference.Tencent’s 2024Q1 financial report shows that value-added service revenue was 45 billion yuan, financial service revenue was 23.9 billion yuan, and advertising revenue was 14.5 billion yuan.Value-added services and financial services combined are nearly 5 times the advertising revenue

  
  

• And its value-added services and financial services are related to payment. Now it will be clear why Telegram wants to focus on mini-games and support Ton:

• Musk also mentioned in the romance that Musk also studied blockchain when he planned to establish a payment system for Twitter.However, as a US listed company, Twitter has higher regulatory risks.

• Through the value-added services of mini-games, on the one hand, it creates huge revenue, and on the other hand, it increases user activity;

• Ton essentially realizes the underlying capabilities of global payments for Telegram.Why not build your own payment like WeChat?Because on the one hand, a large number of Telegram users are distributed in developing countries and may not have their own bank accounts; on the other hand, this also saves a lot of work in traditional payment integration and supervision.In other words, for the long-tail small countries where a large number of Telegram users are located, each small country has several banks. Traditional payment integration is basically impossible, and only blockchain can quickly realize global payments.Therefore, choosing TON is inevitable from a certain perspective.Moreover, the anonymity of blockchain is consistent with Telegram’s vision.

• With payment, Telegram has the most basic functions like WeChat. Sending messages and sending money, and establishing various financial services will be natural.

• Yan Xin has an insight that is also interesting. Based on TON, Telegram can be the first platform to truly promote USDT to distribute to 1 billion people, or to democratize USD interest (on the one hand, people with USD accounts can easily enjoy it.5% annual rate; but on the other hand, many users in the world do not have bank accounts, and their currency inflation is severe)

5. Some interesting points: The biggest pressure comes from the US government, Apple and Google, how to treat surveillance, secure hardware communication devices

Receive contradictory demand from the U.S. government

• After the Capitol Hill riots on January 6, 2021 (thousands of pro-Trump protesters stormed into the Capitol, resulting in casualties), Pavel received a letter from Democratic Congressmen asking for telegramProvide all user information related to that riot.Pavel consulted the attorney for the request, and the attorney advised them to ignore it.

• The letter is very serious, saying that if you don’t cooperate, Telegram will violate the US Constitution

• Two weeks later Pavel received a new letter from Republican congressman, saying that Telegram would violate the U.S. Constitution if any data required in the previous letter was provided.

• “Whatever we do is violate the U.S. Constitution.”

• Carlson Finished: Facebook publicly stated its preference for certain sports and certain countries

The biggest pressure is not from the government, but from Apple and Google

• These two platforms can review everything you can read and access on your smartphone

• The rules of these 2 platforms must be followed, otherwise there will be a risk of being removed from the shelves

• These rules are often vague, and the platform has the right to interpret

How to treat surveillance

• Pavel habitually believed that the equipment he used had been invaded.After his experience in the United States, he has very limited confidence in the security of the platforms developed in the United States (iOS, Android, Mac OS, Windows).

How will the free exchange of information among individuals develop?Are we heading to a world without private communications?Will privacy still exist?Especially in the AI ​​era where technology is becoming more and more developed.

• Pavel is optimistic, believing that some new secure hardware communication devices will emerge in the future, just like using hardware wallets to store cryptocurrencies now.The world is developing periodically, and people are always tired of their current lifestyle and then go in different directions.

10 years ago Pavel and Mark Zuckerberg had a private meeting

• Pavel introduces VK’s upcoming app platform.Finally, Facebook Copy’s not what VK actually did, and he told Mazar during the exchange

• Both sides said they would not expand into each other’s market, but two or three weeks later, both did the opposite: Facebook entered Russia and VK launched the global market

Finally, Pavel said that Twitter is doing well in “free speech” now and has the ability to innovate, and he regards Musk as his comrade.