Telegram abandons its TON blockchain platform

This is basically just a repost of the actual post Durov made: https://telegra.ph/What-Was-TON-And-Why-It-Is-Over-05-12 which has many more comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23156224

Can Telegram afford to return the $1.2bn they raised for this boondoggle?

I'm confused by the final message, why is the CEO asking us to do the battle and he is dropping the project? Am I missing something? After spending months working on it, now he is cutting the project and telling the audience to fight for what he is not?

I know this is not an easy battle, but if they have more users than the US population, they are precisely the group that should not resign.

I'm alone, making likes in their projects, talking people this is happening, and when the moment comes, the fight with the system, they drop at the first sentence? What is this? Was it just a US fight? The decentralization got destroyed by a single man?