💀 Opinion: a collection of cringe

⚫️ This year in TON saw not only an overall decline in TVL, but also many individual "cringe situations" that harmed the ecosystem. People can disagree what exactly counts as cringe. But that's exactly what fits the format of our Friday #opinion column: we present an opinionated list of the three most memorable blunders.

⚫️ The "Grok Integration" announcement. Pavel Durov didn't just mention such an intention, but confidently presented a video demonstrating various features, as if everything was ready for release. Everyone was happy—until Elon Musk suddenly stated that there was actually no agreement yet.

At that moment, it could still seem like a minor hiccup: okay, they didn't finalize the details, but they'll sort them out soon, so everything will happen as promised. But now we can draw a conclusion: the stated date of "summer 2025" has passed, and the promised features never appeared. Will they never happen at all, or will they still come, but later? Grok only knows.

⚫️ The "Golden Visas in UAE for TON" announcement. Also a situation where they presented more than was actually achieved. Here too, the loud partnership announcement was followed by a denial from the other party: the UAE stated they weren't participating in such a program, and TON Foundation had to apologize for the misleading announcement text.

⚫️ "The rug pull by Ethan". We haven't covered this situation before, but it spread widely in the community. A TON Foundation intern started scamming in his free time—and his official verification partly helped him mislead people. When this happened, he was quickly removed from everything TON-related, so the problem lies in the actions of one inadequate individual, not the entire organization. But they managed to cause reputational damage to the organization.

⚫️It's understandable that no one is immune to mistakes, especially in the crypto world, which operates at high speeds. Therefore, we don't want to point fingers and blame anyone. But we must acknowledge that when too much of this accumulates, it harms all of TON. How can people trust new bold announcements now, if past ones have repeatedly misled? Just yesterday, Durov promised a lot of impressive things about Telegram's own AI—will this be followed by corresponding results, or will it turn out like with Grok?

👁 Therefore, we'd like not the maximum number of beautiful announcements, but for those made to be properly executed. Today they announced Memelandia 2.0—let's cross our fingers that after this one, we'll all meet on the Moon in line for a Lamborghini!

@thedailyton