Telegram has announced that it will soon be debuting a decentralized AI network called “Cocoon” on the TON blockchain. With this platform, Telegram aims to provide developers with an AI service that can process tasks privately and confidentially.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced the development on Tuesday, October 29 while addressing the Blockchain Life conference in Dubai. He explained that Cocoon will serve as a decentralized AI layer that will allow GPU owners to churn out TON tokens for powering the network.
“In this network, app developers reward GPU owners with TON for processing inference requests,” a statement from Cocoon’s webpage said asking GPU owners to clarify details around how much processing can they handle and expected uptime among others.
App developers, meanwhile, will be able to get access to low-cost AI computational capabilities to complete their tasks. Telegram has asked developers to specify the expected daily query volume and average input/output token size they expect Cocoon to generate.
Telegram said it will become Cocoon’s first “major customer” to process confidential AI queries. The parameters to classify a query as “private” has not been explained by Telegram for now.
Videos of Durov speaking about this AI tool have surfaced on social media where he can be heard explaining that the word Cocoon stands for “Confidential Compute Open Network”.
Given that the AI initiative is anchored by Telegram, its support on the TON blockchain does not come off as a major surprise. TON was conceived by Durov and his brother in 2017. Owing to a legal battle with the U.S. SEC, however, its development had hit a snag in 2020.
Presently, the blockchain is managed by the Switzerland-based TON Foundation, that was established in 2021 by the community of open-source developers who joined the project following Telegram’s withdrawal from it.