Pavel Durov, co-founder of messaging app Telegram, has unveiled a modern decentralized artificial intelligence network to be built on The Open Network (TON), an independent Layer 1 blockchain associated with Telegram.

Durov took the stage at the Blockchain Life 2025 forum in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates to announce Confidential Compute Open Network, or Cocoon, created to give users access to AI-powered features without sacrificing data privacy to centralized AI providers.

According to Durov, users can provide the network with the processing power of their graphics processing units (GPU) in exchange for receiving Toncoin (TON), the native token of TON. Durov also touched on why decentralized AI is necessary for human freedom:

“Why is it important to do something this way and not in a centralized way, which is sometimes more convenient? This is important, my friends, because the world is heading in a strange direction. Over the last 20 years. We have been gradually losing our digital freedoms.”

Decentralization of AI models has become a widely discussed topic among AI and blockchain developers due to privacy risks and the potential for centralized service providers to censor or distort key information in real time, without users being aware.

Related: Durov from Telegram: “We are running out of time to save the free internet”

Centralized AI vulnerabilities illustrate blockchain’s potential

According to several cryptocurrency and Web3 industry executives, the centralization of artificial intelligence poses risks to user data privacy, including the risk of data breaches and hacks.

Storing huge amounts of user data on centralized servers makes them an attractive target for hackers, David Holtzman, chief strategy officer of decentralized security protocol Naoris, told Cointelegraph.

Centralized AI service providers can also change algorithms behind the scenes or distort critical data in real time to manipulate public opinion, some industry insiders warn.

Blockchain technology can support verify that AI-generated data remains tamper-proof by using a decentralized ledger to record the origin and supply chain of data, thereby creating an immutable and verifiable digital record on-chain.

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