Notes - Pavel Durov

September 28, 2025

Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, and Technology – Summary

I. Introduction and Philosophical Foundations

Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram (a messaging platform used by over 1 billion people), is described as one of the most principled and fearless humans, having spent his life fighting for freedom of speech and protecting human communication from surveillance and censorship. He has faced pressure from powerful governments and organizations.

The conversation is part philosophical (covering freedom, life, human nature, and bureaucracy) and part technical (Telegram's ability to out-innovate competitors with a relatively small engineering team).

Core Values and Stoicism

Durov's commitment to freedom stems from experiencing the difference between a society with freedom and one without (moving from the Soviet Union to northern Italy at age four), realizing that freedom enables abundance and contribution. He believes: "Freedom matters more than money".

Enemies of Freedom: The biggest enemies of freedom are fear and greed. To overcome fear, one must imagine the worst possible outcome and become comfortable with it.
Mortality: Contemplating death rationally helps ensure that every day counts, allowing one to live immune to fear.
Self-Discipline and Addictive Substances: Durov lives a disciplined, aesthetic life, characterized by complete abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, coffee, pills, and illegal drugs for over 20 years. Alcohol is seen as a poison that paralyzes and kills brain cells for short-term pleasure. When people feel the need to drink, they should confront the underlying problem, which is often fear.
Non-Conformity: It is crucial to consciously fight the inclination to be agreeable with the majority, as conformity prevents one from becoming outstanding and achieving competitive advantage. Success requires being different and achieving mastery in a niche.

II. Productivity and Lifestyle

Durov emphasizes the need to define one's own agenda and minimize distractions.

Information Curation: To maintain clarity of mind and reach full potential, one must proactively curate information sources to avoid being enslaved to AI-driven recommender systems that feed the same content to everyone.
Minimal Phone Use: Durov minimizes phone use (except occasionally to test Telegram features) because the device provides distractions and allows external organizations to dictate what is important.
Quiet Thinking: He allocates quiet time, often while lying in bed early in the morning, to think deeply and generate ideas, noting that opening the phone first thing in the morning makes one a "creature that is told what to think about for the rest of the day". Excessive connectivity reduces productivity.
Action Over Rest: To overcome negativity or despair, one must identify the problem and immediately start executing a strategy; energy is gained by doing something, not resting. This approach applies to physical activity, coding, or writing.

Health and Fitness Regimen

Durov’s workout routine is rigorous:

He performs 300 push-ups and 300 squats every morning.
He goes to the gym 5–6 times a week, spending 1–2 hours daily.
Physical activity (including ice baths and Banya—Eastern European extreme sauna) is primarily an exercise in self-discipline and stress resilience.
Prolonged physical activity, such as swimming for hours (longest was 5.5 hours), clears the mind, increases the efficiency of the brain (by improving sugar/oxygen flow), and teaches patience.
Diet involves no processed sugar, fast food, or soda. He practices intermittent fasting (eating within a six-hour window) and primarily consumes seafood and vegetables, having stopped red meat 20 years ago.
He avoids pills and pharmaceutical products, arguing they mute consequences (pain) but do not eliminate the root cause of the problem.

III. Telegram: Engineering, Security, and Principles

Lean Structure and Efficiency

Telegram is run lean, with a core engineering team of about 40 people.

A small team is philosophically preferred because quantity does not translate to quality; large teams spend too much time coordinating and include demotivating, unproductive members.
Forcing the team to stay small mandates automation (relying on algorithms rather than thousands of manual managers) to handle tens of thousands of servers worldwide, making the system more scalable, efficient, reliable, and resilient. Humans are considered "attack vectors".

User Privacy and Security

Telegram's infrastructure is designed to protect user data from external pressure:

Data is stored across many legal jurisdictions, and decryption keys are split and kept in different locations so no single government or entity can access the data.
The system ensures that no employees can access private messaging data.
Telegram has never shared a single private message with any government or intelligence service. Durov stated they would rather shut Telegram down in a certain country than compromise privacy.
Telegram offers Secret Chats with end-to-end encryption (launched in 2013, setting an industry standard). This encryption is opt-in, recognizing the trade-off between extreme privacy and utility (like large groups and multi-device support).
Telegram is the only popular messaging app that provides open source reproducible builds for both Android and iOS, allowing users to verify that the downloaded app matches the public source code.
The software stack (including database engines, web servers, and the backend programming language) is largely built from scratch internally to increase security and efficiency, minimizing reliance on potentially flawed open-source tools.

Design and Innovation

Telegram prioritizes speed and efficiency, believing that even small delays waste massive amounts of human time. Telegram has led the industry by introducing features like the auto-delete timer (seven years ahead of competitors), message editing, replies, and vector-based animated stickers.

Design elements, such as shifting background gradients and the message evaporation animation upon deletion, are intended to be high-quality art that works efficiently on the weakest devices and brings subtle joy to users without distraction.

IV. Geopolitical Pressure and the French Saga

Standing Ground Against Pressure

Durov's integrity and principles are paramount; he owns 100% of Telegram, ensuring no shareholders can force him to compromise his values. He views the erosion of rights (often justified by fighting crime or protecting children) as a slippery slope toward autocracy.

Durov revealed that in 2018, he believes he was the target of an assassination attempt using poisoning. He suffered acute pain and collapsed, unable to walk for two weeks, but surviving this experience made him feel even more free.

The Kafkaesque French Investigation

Durov recounted his arrest in France in August last year during a two-day trip.

He was accused of various serious crimes allegedly committed by some Telegram users, a situation he found "mind-boggling".
He spent almost four days in police custody in a small room with a concrete bed and no windows.
The situation has "eerie parallels" to Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial, illustrating the absurdity and soul-suffocation of bureaucracy.
Durov noted that the investigators demonstrated a "lack of understanding" of technology and encryption.
The investigation is seen as an absurd and politically motivated attempt to regulate social media. Durov's travel freedom is currently restricted to Dubai.

Attempts at Political Censorship

French intelligence services attempted to pressure Durov while he was stuck in France.

He was asked to shut down channels supporting a conservative candidate in the Romanian presidential election and channels protesting pro-European candidates.
He refused, stating it would be political censorship and that Telegram protects freedom of speech for all (left-wing and right-wing groups) as long as they do not call for violence.
Similar pressure was exerted regarding channels in Moldova. Durov found it alarming that the intelligence services seemingly implied a connection between Telegram complying with their requests and the investigative judge handling his case.
Durov stated that the more pressure he receives, the more resilient and defiant he becomes, vowing to publicly disclose every instance a government tries to force him to act.

V. Business Model and The Open Network (TON)

Telegram achieved profitability in 2024. Durov has consistently avoided targeted advertisements, which rely on exploiting user personal data, even though he estimates this leaves 80% of potential value (revenue) on the table.

Telegram's revenue is generated primarily through three sources:

Premium Subscriptions: Launched in 2022, offering additional features for advanced users. There are now over 15 million paid subscribers, projected to bring in over half a billion dollars in revenue this year.
Context-Based Ads: Non-targeted advertisements based only on the channel or group topic.
Mini App Platform: A thriving ecosystem where developers create integrated applications, from which Telegram extracts a low 5% commission.

TON Blockchain

Durov and his brother, Nikolai, developed TON (The Open Network), a scalable Layer 1 blockchain, after realizing existing platforms like Bitcoin and Ethereum could not cope with Telegram's user load.

The project was later taken over by the open-source community after the SEC intervened.
TON is deeply integrated into Telegram's ecosystem and is used for tokenized usernames, revenue sharing, transacting for ads, and Telegram Gifts (socially relevant, vector-based NFTs).

VI. Lessons on Abundance and Legacy

Scarcity and Purpose

Durov holds that scarcity leads to creativity. Referencing the Mouse Paradise Experiment (Universe 25), he noted that unlimited abundance, despite providing all resources, led to irreversible societal collapse because the mice lost their ability to identify purpose.

Durov felt lucky to have grown up poor, as this created purpose, meaning, and focus. He believes humans evolved to overcome scarcity, and self-restriction is necessary to create meaning in an abundant world.

Inheritance and Paternity

Durov revealed that he has over 100 biological children due to being a sperm donor about 15 years ago. He instructed his will to treat all his biological children equally, regardless of how they were conceived. He stated that inheritance should be restricted until the children are adults, as overabundance paralyzes motivation and willpower.

The Power of Thought

Durov believes that prolonged, logical effort coupled with positive thinking and confidence is bound to be successful. He suggests visualizing effort and focus as a way to "morph the landscape of probabilities," making desired outcomes more likely.