Is this the same foundation as in the TON whitepaper?
No, it is not. We proceed from the principle that community management should be, firstly, initiated and developed by the community and not be concentrated in the hands of a particular company, and secondly, that mechanisms should appear as a response to challenges that cannot be resolved through just chat. Simply put, the current stage of TON development and its community already require discussion and formal fixes for certain decision-making and organized efforts to develop the system. Moreover, healthy decentralized systems have multiple coordination and regulation bodies, and ultimately, the final word on the blockchain is left to validators.
Will there be a vote and how it is going to be carried out?
By all means various kinds of voting will be established through an open discussion; however, there is some consensus regarding the use of meritocracy and quadratic voting principles, but not based on the volume of stake or assets, since in our opinion the pure PoS / dPoS principle can lead to an oligarchic nature of governance. Anyway, we will have a discussion on fair arrangement later.
Will the TCF have a budget? Is it related to the Gram Reserve Fund?
Most likely we will not have access to the Reserve Fund mentioned in the whitepaper, et, there will be a budget sustained through various options that exist to ensure self-sufficiency, in particular, small membership fees may be introduced, voluntary donations accepted, etc. The nonprofit nature of the TCF does not imply any income generation and all funds received by the organization shall be earmarked to finance its main goals and operating expenses. At this point we do not require financing or other assets, so we suggest tackling this problem when it actually arises.
Will the TCF develop TON?
No. The TCF will not have its own development team nor will it modify the TON source code, commit changes, or deploy wallets for instance. The TCF may ask the community for certain solutions and provide relevant recommendations. Later we may consider providing development grants or even ordering features seen as critical for either the Foundation or TON… yet, the latter point seems highly unlikely.
Does the TON/Telegram team have anything to do with the TCF?
The TON/Tetlegram team cannot prevent the community from organizing itself. This is the essence of decentralization. As far as we know they do not mind the initiative, which is enough. By the way, even if they did it would exclusively affect personal relations with team members and good will in communications. Disputes are never good, but wishes remain wishes.