Pavel Durov spoke at Blockchain Life 2025 in Dubai: freedom of speech, the future of TON and Cocoon

Telegram owner Pavel Durov appeared on stage at the Blockchain Life 2025 conference in Dubai, where he gave a speech on decentralization, internet freedom, and the technological future. His appearance was one of the most anticipated events of the forum, drawing a full house of participants from around the world. Durov announced Cocoon — Confidential Compute Open Network, which will be a powerful driver for the TON ecosystem for several years to come.

Durov emphasized that Telegram remains a symbol of the fight for “freedom of speech” and “the right of people to control their own data.” He recalled how, under pressure from European and French regulators, he had to temporarily leave the country, but stressed that this only strengthened his conviction in the importance of a free internet.

During his speech, Durov presented a new project for developers — a platform for creating Telegram Mini Apps with AI functions, which will be available starting in November. It will allow companies and independent developers to launch their own services directly in the messenger, using Telegram as a decentralized ecosystem.

Cocoon is a decentralized network for secure and private AI inference. In this network, application developers reward GPU owners with TON tokens for processing inference requests. Telegram will be the first major client to use Cocoon for confidential AI requests and will invest heavily in promoting the network throughout its global ecosystem.

He specifically mentioned the TON ecosystem, which is already generating profits for users through internal services, and announced the expansion of reward programs for token holders. Concluding his speech, Durov addressed the younger generation, emphasizing that “freedom, dignity, and independence are the highest values that we must preserve for our children.”