Biography of the brothers durov, founder of Telegram, a way of "rebellion" of the gifted youth

Original title: "4% hegemony durov brothers biography"

Source: confiction ux Chinese community

On May 12, 2020, the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, announced on the Telegram public channel that the Telegram Open Network (TON) project was ending.

"Today is a sad day for Telegram and for us. We announce that we will terminate our blockchain project." Pavel wrote in his blog what is TON and why does it end? "While there may be networks based on the technology we have built for TON, we will not be affiliated with them and are unlikely to support them in any way. So be careful not to let anyone mislead you."

"The United States can use its control over the dollar and the global financial system to close down any bank or bank account in the world. It can use its control over Apple and Google to remove apps from the App Store and Google Play.Unfortunately, we -- 96 percent of the world's population lives in other countries -- rely on elected policy makers from the 4 percent of the world's population who live in the United States. "

Telegram's raucous fight with the securities and exchange commission (SEC) is finally over.

In pavel's eyes, freedom once again failed to break through the blockade, and 4% hegemony once again staged the drama that "bad guys" can always win. In the following, we will use a series of articles to introduce what you know and don't know about the durov brothers, Telegram and TON.

The years of falling in love with the SEC

TON is an ambitious project to take advantage of Telegram's vast user base to offer decentralized cryptocurrency to anyone with a smartphone.

On December 3, 2017, TON published a 132-page white paper (entirely by nikolai durov, the fighting nation respect). In order to raise funds, TON officially announced the sale of private tokens on January 12, 2018. TON originally planned to split the closed-end financing into three phases, but as soon as it reached the second phase, it raised $1.7 billion, twice as much as expected, so the third phase was canceled.

Legend has it that zhang lei, founder of hillhouse capital, who invested in tencent, jd.com, Meituan, baidu, gree, Airbnb and other well-known enterprises and is known as "the godfather of value investment in contemporary China", invested $20 million worth of BTC to dulov brothers without doing any due diligence in the early stage. This is probably the most direct practice of zhang lei's investment philosophy that "who you choose to travel with in your life is more important than where you are going". It also shows that the influence of the ICO boom reached its peak at that time.

But the quiet "creepy growth" of TON would never have guessed that he would be dragged down by his biggest competitor, Facebook. In the second half of 2019, influenced by Facebook's Libra project, governments, central Banks and regulators around the world paid special attention to the regulatory risks of such cryptographic projects and cryptocurrencies.

On October 12, 2019, just before the launch of TON's main network, the securities and exchange commission (SEC) suddenly sent a letter of complaint.

It was that letter that changed the trajectory of TON.

In its letter, the SEC said it characterized GRAM's financing process as an "illegal online sale of digital asset securities" and planned to take "urgent action and obtain a temporary restraining order" against the two offshore entities involved in the private placement of its scrip, GRAM, for violating securities laws.

Telegram was also quick to respond. The day after receiving the complaint, Telegram filed a counterclaim, calling the SEC's emergency injunction "baseless" and noting that the GRAM token was not a security and that the SEC should not force it to produce data about TON's documents and icos.

By this time, Libra was in full swing, affecting governments, financial institutions and regulators everywhere. The SEC is also wary of financial innovations brought about by such new technologies as blockchain. So on February 19th of this year, a hearing on TON was held in New York. The United States district court asked Telegram about "whether the digital asset GRAM is a security" and "whether it is a security after the official launch of TON main network".

Telegram was confident and well-prepared, but ultimately failed.

The court argued that people should not be allowed to buy and sell GRAM the way they buy and sell bitcoin. To limit GRAM's sales, the U.S. courts made even more incomprehensible demands. The court ordered Telegram not only to stop selling GRAM in the United States, but also around the world.

In desperation, Telegram had to give up TON.

When the news of TON's abandonment came out, GRAM futures tokens on all major trading platforms fell sharply.

The price of GRAM's futures fell more than 90% to $0.15 from $1.59 the previous day, according to data provided by Bitforex. On the market instant ghost cry Wolf howl, investors have cut meat to leave.

Faced with such an outcome, Telegram founder pavel durov also felt heartbroken.

"Yes, other countries do not have full sovereignty over what is allowed on their territory. Unfortunately, we -- 96 percent of the world's population lives in other countries -- rely on elected decision makers from the 4 percent of the world's population who live in the United States."

The men who stood up to big brother

This is not the first time pavel durov has been "head-on". In fact, he is known in the geek world as the rebel. Pavel valyevich durov was born in Leningrad (now st. Petersburg, Russia) on October 10, 1984.

His father had a PhD in philosophy, was a prominent latinologist and had a brother, Nikolai Durov, who was four years his senior. Because of his father's work, pavel spent his childhood in Turin, Italy. Later, pavel returned to Russia to continue his studies, taking secondary school courses at a liberal arts college in st. Petersburg.

By this time, pavel was already showing interest and considerable talent in programming. At the age of 18, pavel entered the prestigious st. Petersburg state university. The following year, he launched Durov.com, a website named after his family name. Later, pavel founded the university of st. Petersburg online forum, which provides an open platform for online debate among university students.

Along with the talent came his increasingly rebellious personality. He only wears black, like Neo in the matrix.

In the eyes of his older brother nikolai, pavel was a young man who despised authority. As soon as he learned to write the code, he hacked into the school's network, replacing the welcome screen with "Must Die" and placing a picture of his most hated teacher next to it. The school had to "fight back" by constantly changing its password, but pavel was always the first to crack it.

It is said that pavel will often initiate a variety of debates in the forum, and wear different "vest" shuttle among them, staged the "debate with themselves" drama.

It was the summer of 2006. With a prestigious college degree, years of overseas experience, and a talent for programming, a Scorpio might as well step into the world.

But a chance, pavel opened a corner of the world curtain, the turning point of life, appear to be caught off guard.

In 2006, the st. Petersburg business daily published an article about university social software. Mirilashvili, a former classmate of pavel's who was in the United States at the time, approached durov with the Facebook story to discuss a business plan.

In November of the same year, VKontakte (hereinafter referred to as VK) was registered and established.

VKontakte is Russian В К о н т а seem т е English wording, meaning "contact", "contact". The two young men pitched the Internet social networking product as a tool to "find former classmates and childhood friends."

Like most social networks, VK's core functions are based on personal information and the sharing of photos, as well as services such as status updates and contact with friends. VK also has web tools for managing web communities and celebrities, allowing users to upload and search for news media content, such as videos and music.

Understaffed, pavel sent a message to his brother nikolai in Germany, inviting him to join his business ambitions. Nikolai did not hesitate to return to Russia and devote all his energy to the development of VK technology.

At this point, another genius of the durov family also stepped into people's vision.

Pavel's talent for programming and business vision is enviable, brother nicolai is a genius in every sense of the word.

Wikipedia describes nikolai as a "programmer and mathematician" who was known as a child prodigy. He took part in three international mathematics olympiads and won three gold MEDALS. He also took part in four international informatics olympiads and won one gold medal and three silver MEDALS. So far, nicolai is one of only 10 people who have won ACM twice. It turned out that the real warrior never left the competition empty-handed.

& have spent Nikolai & sponge, center, at a math club summer camp in 1994; & have spent

More to the point of despair, brother nicolai was not the nerdy type who excelled at mathematical contests. With doctorates from st Petersburg state university and Bonn university, he has been leading the VK engineering team. It was also a small but well-staffed technical team that completed the entire engineering and technical requirements of VK and didn't stop working on VK until 2013.

& have spent Nikolai & NBSP, who was photographed by a friend at a IMO summer camp in 1998;& have spent

& have spent Eating Chinese food & NBSP; with teammates during a competition in Taiwan; & have spent

Pavel has said in public on more than one occasion that nikolai was his role model and mentor from an early age.

Under the leadership of two gifted talents, the number of VK users has exceeded 100,000 within 3 months since its launch. The following April, VK became Russia's most popular social network with 10 million users. Pavel also made his first fortune, with a fortune of $260 million in his early 20s.

In 2007, the Russian business magazine st. Petersburg business named him "the best young entrepreneur of 2007", and pavel durov quickly rose to fame and became an important figure in the Russian Internet world.

It's hard to imagine that a man who combines looks with wealth has been a scandal insulator for years.

Russian media have reported on this in two different ways. One maintains that pavel only liked women who were as good looking as they were intelligent, so it was hard for anyone to fall for him.

Another theory is that pavel was having an affair with Russian supermodel alena shishkova because he went to her birthday party.

Prosperity is short, prosperity is short. Four years after its founding, VK took on the Russian government. When the state security service asked VK to shut down the pages of some of putin's opponents in the 2012 parliamentary elections, pavel refused.

After that, pavel grew more cynical.

One day in 2012, pavel and his staff stood in front of the window of their office in one of st. Petersburg's busiest districts and threw stacks of banknotes -- 5,000 rubles ($100) each -- at passers-by. Caused bystanders to scramble, road congestion.

In the Ukraine crisis of 2014, VK, a free speech platform, became a platform for communication among anti-kremlin groups. Russian security forces asked VK to hand over the personal information of a Ukrainian activist. The rebellious pavel responded by Posting only one photo on his social networking site.

Later, he was summoned by the attorney general's office. Inside the company, it also began to push out pavel. Eventually pavel lost control of VK by ignoring police inquiries.On the day the police raided VK's office, pavel and his brother nikolai had boarded a plane out of Russia and were on their way to exile for freedom.

"Freedom" is a proof

"I am not fighting for freedom," pavel wrote in his autobiography. "I am using my existence to prove that freedom has not disappeared."

Read the power, identity, public opinion... Such as the kidnapping of free will, Slavic blood flowing in the body of the durov brothers, embarked on the journey to create a land for free will, they hope to create a can protect the user privacy, not by any third party organizations monitoring the social platform.

In 2013, pavel took the house, the furniture, the car... All the fixed assets that can be sold are sold, and all the money is invested in this ideal. In Buffalo, on the Canadian border, the durov brothers masterminded the creation of Telegram.

In order to keep Telegram out of the hands of the government, capital and other powerful forces, pavel has said that Telegram will not accept any advertising or third-party investment.

According to Telegram, Mr. Pavel is paying $1 million a month for maintenance and operations.

Telegram's growth has not disappointed pavel. In August 2013, Telegram was launched on iOS, and two months later, it was launched on android. In October of the same year, Telegram had more than 100,000 daily active users. By March 2018, Telegram had reached 200 million monthly active users, with at least 700,000 new users signing up every day.

In terms of user size, Telegram can rival the world's sixth largest country.

The rapid growth of the number of users in just a few years is inseparable from Telegram's excellent information encryption scheme. To protect users' privacy,Telegram has designed a new encryption protocol, MTProto. The user initiates a chat with one-to-one encryption, end-to-end encryption, and the ability to set the duration of each message.

& have spent Photo: Telegram encryption protocol MTProto  & have spent

The durov brothers were so confident about Telegram's encryption protocol that they released the code and boasted that anyone who cracked Telegram's security protocol would be rewarded with $200,000.

So far, no one has been able to get the full 200,000.

Telegram, with a password to unlock the phone and a mode to unlock it, is the most confidential chat app in the world. Google tried to buy Telegram at a high price, but pavel refused. "even if it is 20 billion dollars, it is not for sale. It is a promise," he said.

So far, no public information has been provided about the Telegram team members, and the code style of some team members can only be glimpsed from the contributors on Github.

Pavel has mentioned in interviews and self-reports that at least six members of the team have won ACM awards, an international collegiate programming competition, and could all easily get excellent offers from companies like Google or Facebook.

The winner of the competition is the label of the gifted youth and the standard of the star team in the Internet field. There is no denying that talented young people who are working to break the rules of the world are rushing to the same technological frontier.

However, Telegram's privacy protection is so good that it has attracted a large number of terrorists to gather and become a communication base for ISIS terrorists. Many people (including snowden) blamed Telegram for this, and pavel finally had to shut down some channels and groups set up by terrorist organizations on Telegram.

Still, Mr Pavel is adamant that the invasion of users' privacy is worse than terrorism: "99.999% of people on Telegram have nothing to do with terrorism".

He was a great admirer of franklin's idea of freedom and security: those who sacrifice liberty in order to live in peace deserve neither liberty nor security. However, the durov brothers' goal of changing the world through Telegram and blockchain technology has been defeated by SEC.

But the talented never stop there. As he said in the statement, "we leave it to the next generation of entrepreneurs and developers to take the baton and learn from our mistakes."

Faced with a mixed reputation, pavel, who claims to be a follower of Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) on VK, would probably respond with a doctrine:

"Anyway, the cooking is not in the paste (the Lord does not care)".

Original link:https://mp.weixin.qq.com

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia