Telegram has officially announced the launch of a decentralized AI network called Cocoon, built on the TON blockchain, designed to enable secure and private execution of artificial intelligence (AI) queries. The announcement came from Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, during the Blockchain Life 2025 conference in Dubai, marking a significant step toward merging blockchain and AI technologies.
According to Durov, Cocoon will allow developers to pay for computational resources using Toncoin (TON), the native cryptocurrency of the network. Meanwhile, GPU owners will be rewarded in cryptocurrency for contributing their computing power. This system creates a fully decentralized ecosystem where anyone with the right hardware can join and profit from AI computation tasks.
To participate in the Cocoon network, users will need to specify their model architecture (such as DeepSeek or Qwen), along with details like daily query volume and average token size. This structure ensures resource allocation efficiency while maintaining privacy and performance across distributed computing nodes.
One of Cocoon’s standout features is end-to-end encryption of all data, meaning that participants cannot see the actual AI requests being processed. As Telegram’s official announcement explains, this can be described as a form of “private AI on the TON blockchain”, setting a new standard for confidential AI operations in decentralized environments.
Telegram itself will become the first official client of the Cocoon network and plans to invest heavily in its global rollout. The official launch is scheduled for November 2025, following an open call for potential contributors and GPU providers. This move highlights Telegram’s commitment to decentralization and user privacy in the emerging AI landscape.
The concept of Cocoon first surfaced during Durov’s visit to Kazakhstan in October, where he presented a new AI laboratory initiative. He emphasized that Telegram’s research team had been working for months on technology at the intersection of AI and blockchain, aiming to bring privacy-focused AI services to over one billion users worldwide.
This announcement follows Telegram’s partnership with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier in May, which enabled the Grok chatbot to be integrated into the platform, expanding its ecosystem of AI-driven tools. The addition of Cocoon further positions Telegram as a key player in the decentralized AI revolution, providing a unique mix of transparency, scalability, and privacy for global users.
In conclusion, Telegram’s Cocoon on TON represents a major leap toward democratizing AI access by combining the security of blockchain with the computational power of decentralized networks. As privacy concerns grow and AI adoption accelerates, Cocoon could redefine how individuals and businesses interact with intelligent systems — securely, transparently, and without intermediaries.
