Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram, has just thrown down the gauntlet to Big Tech giants. At the Blockchain Life 2025 conference in Dubai, he presented Cocoon – a decentralized AI infrastructure running on the TON blockchain, which will pay GPU owners in TON tokens for powering private artificial intelligence calculations.
Cocoon – cheap AI infrastructure with cryptocurrencies in the background
Cocoon (Confidential Compute Open Network) is a marketplace where anyone can share the computing power of their graphics card and receive cryptocurrencies in return. On the other hand, developers gain access to low-cost AI infrastructure that processes queries without disclosing user data to centralized providers. Sound familiar? Projects like Akash Network or Render Network are already doing this, but Cocoon has one advantage – 1 billion Telegram users.
The launch is scheduled for November 2025, and Telegram will be the first and largest client of the network. The company will integrate Cocoon with its ecosystem of Mini Apps and bots, offering AI features such as summaries and automatic messaging – all without compromising privacy.
Why does this matter?
When you use ChatGPT or Gemini, the giants see everything – your prompts, data, behavior patterns. Altman himself recently even announced that OpenAI will cooperate with law enforcement agencies and provide the user’s conversation history if necessary.
Cocoon encrypts information throughout the entire process, even from GPU owners performing computations. This is a direct response to growing concerns about the centralization of AI and the erosion of digital freedom.
Durov explicitly positions the project as an alternative to the AWS and Microsoft Azure monopoly. Pricing will result from the dynamics of supply and demand – potentially more competitive than traditional cloud providers, although with some risk regarding the reliability of services.
Do OpenAI, Google and Antropic have anything to fear?
Max Crown, CEO of TON Foundation, does not mince his words:
In a world where centralized AI systems collect data and concentrate power, Cocoon restores balance by giving users control over computation, privacy and ownership.
Nasdaq-listed AlphaTON Capital has already announced “significant investments” in network hardware, including the latest high-memory GPUs. All based on the multi-chain TON architecture that processes millions of transactions per second.
Will Cocoon really revolutionize the AI market? We will find out in the coming months, but the fight for the future of artificial intelligence is only just beginning. Contrary to appearances, what is at stake is not only the record profits of giants, but something much more important – our crumbs of privacy.
