TON, or the Telegram Open Network, is a blockchain platform created by the popular messaging app Telegram. The project was first proposed in 2018 as a way to provide fast and secure decentralized payments, digital identity, and other services to Telegram’s user base of over 500 million people. TON was designed to scale to millions of transactions per second and to support an ecosystem of decentralized apps and services.

Despite facing regulatory hurdles and legal challenges, TON gained significant attention and support in the blockchain and cryptocurrency communities, and its development continued until its official launch in September 2021.

History of TON

In 2018, the white paper and lite paper for the Telegram Open Network called Gram were released. The project was in the works and was able to accrue funds from different areas through the private sales of the token. In fact, it was able to break market records and was named the second-largest token sale in April 2018, raising $1.7 billion.

Soon after, the network gained a lot of attention, and the spotlight led to more surveillance, which caused a lot of issues for the network. One of the issues arose when several scams occurred on Twitter before the launch of the token’s initial coin offering (ICO). This made Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov make an official statement stating the company would develop an official method for users to take part in the ICO.

Source: TON

Gram was to be sold publicly under U.S. jurisdiction. For that to happen, Telegram had to follow all of the SEC’s (Securities and Exchange Commission) rules and guidelines. The network’s original plan was to grant investors tokens whenever the token was launched. This was to prevent the SEC from registering Gram tokens as securities. This plan failed as SEC viewed the token’s initial investors as underwriters and termed the earlier exchange of Gram an unregistered distribution of securities.

Telegram and SEC ended up in court, but sadly, Telegram lost, and in May 2020, Pavel Durov withdrew from developing the blockchain and issued refunds to the network’s initial investors. This prompted crypto enthusiasts and developers who saw potential in the project to pick up where Telegram left off.

This was easily accomplished since TON was developed as an open-source project and the code was available on GitHub. The worldwide support for TON had been pulled together to develop a new and functional TON.

How Does TON Work? Sharding and its two main blockchains

The operations of TON are heavily dependent on the Toncoin, and the token can be used for several transactions, such as payment in decentralized apps (Dapps) and so much more. The Open Network was built to host billions of users at the same time.

It can successfully carry out this task by using blockchain sharding. Blockchain sharding is a process that involves a network using several subnetworks or shards on the same blockchain to successfully carry out tasks immediately.

The layer-1 blockchain runs on the Proof-of-Stake (POS) consensus. Every transaction carried out is validated using Toncoin, which is also used to reward validators. The network initially adopted the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, but after utilizing the PoS consensus, it boasts of a much faster, more secure, and low-cost network that exceeds other platforms.

TON is made up of two major blockchains: the master blockchain and several working blockchains (workchains). The master blockchain is in charge of safekeeping the protocol’s general information. For instance, validator information, workchains, and shards.

The workchains contain details on events happening on the network, like smart contracts and value transfer. The peculiar thing about the networks’ workchains is that each one can be split up into shard blockchains. Each one is set to handle transactions for a small group of accounts.

This is important to the speed of the network since it helps cut down the level of congestion significantly and reduces the workload on the network.

What are TON’s features? From Actor Model to being fully universal

TON is known for its speed and efficiency. The developers, along with the community, designed the system with the user in mind and added a few advanced features that set the platform apart from others.

Actor Model

At the center of TON, we have an actor model. It is the mathematical framework of concurrent computation. It is the center of the TON smart contract. It allows each smart contract to get a message, alter its state, or send either one or multiple messages per unit of time.

This means the entire blockchain and any given contract can scale up and host infinite users and carry out numerous transactions.

Virtual Machine

The virtual machine applied by TON (TON Virtual Machine) is a deterministic, fully featured stack-based virtual machine. It is used to implement smart contracts on the blockchain. The user-friendly system makes it easy to use, and it implements and stores codes efficiently.

External Messaging

Another unique feature of TON is the ability for the TON blockchain and the other contracts on the network to receive external messages from other blockchains or the internet in general. This means that without having an on-chain account, anyone could send a message to TON, and smart contracts could use the data on operations in the blockchain.

FunC

This is a programming language for the TON Virtual Machine (TVM). The domain-specific, statically typed language writes smart contracts on the TON blockchain. To get familiar with FunC, you will need a standard library, stdlib.fc.

Fully Universal

On TON, it is possible for any network account to have a balance as well as host different codes and data. Even a simple wallet could become a smart contract. This architecture gives developers a level of freedom to do whatever they wish with their smart contracts.

Libraries

The base client library for TON, Tonlib, has several new features different from other libraries. Using Merkle-proofs, not only is it able to receive data from the blockchain, but it is also able to check the validity of the data. This way, TON developers can make use of unknown external endpoints to interact with the TON blockchain, knowing that the transactions are secure.

TON Wallets

TON Wallet is a non-custodial wallet that allows crypto enthusiasts to store their TON tokens on the TON blockchain. The TON wallet gives you access to user-friendly apps and allows you to send and receive tokens.

The non-custodial nature of TON Wallet limits the access other users have to your wallet. This is perfect for users who prefer being entirely in charge of their digital assets. Asides from its non-custodial wallets, TON also has an in-built custodial platform that can be easily accessed using the @wallet telegram bot.

The custodial wallet handled by the telegram wallet bot will take care of all your storage needs as you carry out transactions with the assets stored in your wallet.

Source: TON Wallets

TON Governance

TON is a community-led, user-friendly blockchain. As such, the decisions regarding the blockchain are made by the users of the blockchain. This is possible through the use of Toncoin, the native token of the project.

Toncoin is used within the project to vote on changes and developments in the chain. This voting system ensures that users have an opinion on how the future of the project is going to look, rather than leaving it all in the hands of the creators.

What Is Toncoin?

This is the official token of the network. It is used for several activities, like paying transaction fees, ensuring the safety of the chain through staking, making decisions on the future of the network, and finally making payments. It also has other uses, like:

• Payment for decentralized data storage
• Payment to use TON Proxy
• Payment for TON DNS
• Voting
• Rewarding validators

TON Ecosystem

The Open Network’s main goal is to create a network that is simple enough for users to find ways to use the token. In an effort to create such a system, the TON development community has tried to incorporate different features that separate the token from competitors.

TON was developed right after Ethereum was launched, so it took notes from what worked well in the EVM model and also worked on the aspects that needed improvement. These adjustments created an ecosystem that places the blockchain within the reach of everyone.

TON vs. Solana vs. Ethereum

TON has several features that make it stand out. Users around are wondering just how well the platform fairs when compared to giants Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL). Most users usually judge based on three parameters:

Block and Time-To-Finality

Users are usually interested in the speed of transactions and the speed of the blockchain. The faster the blocks are built, the less time users will have to wait for money transfers and the execution of smart contracts.

TON

A new block on each shardchain and masterchain is created every 5 seconds on TON. New Sharchain blocks are created almost simultaneously, and on the masterchain, blocks are created a second after because they must have the hashes of the recent blocks of the shard chain.

Ethereum 2.0

Unlike Ton, Ethereum makes use of slots and epochs. The creation of a slot takes 12 seconds in which a validator proposes the creation of a new Beacon Chain and a Shardchain. An epoch on the other hand requires 32 slots (6.4 minutes). The laid-down rules of Ethereum 2.0 dictates that block finality requires at least 2 epochs, which amounts to a finality time of 12.8 minutes.

Solana

Solana boasts a block generation time of one second or faster but has an extended block finalization time. A block usually needs around 16 votes rounds before it is finalized. Each round takes around 400 milliseconds, which adds up to a finality time of 6.4 seconds.

Performance

Users usually wonder if a blockchain is capable of processing smart contracts at scale, which is important for complex blockchain projects.

TON

TON is a high-performance blockchain that is able to accommodate all types of transactions on a masterchain and all of its workchains. It is also Turing-complete.

Ethereum 2.0

Turing-complete EVM is only available on the Beacon Chain, with a limit of 15 transactions per second. A lack of cross-shard interactions means additional transactions will not be executed in a truly decentralized environment.

Solana

The SOL network is a Turing-complete network that only performs well with a large number of very simple transactions of different predefined types and only when the data of all user accounts fits into RAM.

Scalability

Scalability relates to the number of users and the level of interaction with the network.

TON

TON supports workchains and dynamic sharding. The network can handle a large number of workchains, and each of these workchains can be subdivided, creating a larger number of shardchains equipped with almost instant cross-shard and cross-chain communication. All this makes TON perfect for handling millions of transactions per second.

Ethereum 2.0

Ethereum 2.0 is predicted to have high levels of scalability through the implementation of sharding techniques. The use of 64 shard chains, is in theory 64 times faster than the current version.

Solana

The SOL network does not support sharding or workchain.

Source: TON - Blockchain Analysis

Projects Built On The TON Blockchain

There have been several projects built on the TON blockchain, like NFTs, chats, bots, and so on. Some of the projects include:

TON Auction

TON Auction is a platform that facilitates auctions, trades, sells items, and creates auctions for everyone to participate in. It supports three different types of auctions: open auctions, English auctions, and first-price and second-price sealed-bid blind auctions.

OracleHub

OracleHub is a TON-based project that allows smart contracts to interact with the outside world. It also serves as a marketplace for data providers.

TON Roulette Lottery

TON Roulette Lottery is a roulette-style lottery. Players buy squares on the playing area and wait till the round ends before earning returns as high as 1259% on the square prices.

The Chat Game

The Chat Game is a game built on collectible items and many other RPG mechanics. The user inventories are implemented as an open registry on the TON blockchain. This lets users store, send and take items using arbitrary, complex actions that are controlled by smart contracts.

Is TON A Good Investment?

Scalability is a big issue when choosing which blockchain to use, and TON is one of the few chains out there that has achieved high scalability. This makes it one of the most advanced blockchain projects out there.

With its ability to host numerous chains at the same time and an architecture that allows developers to write their smart contracts however they wish, TON is set to be one of the most used layer-1 blockchains out there, hosting numerous users and carrying out several transactions.

How To Own Toncoin?

Toncoin can be obtained through either a centralized or decentralized cryptocurrency exchange. Toncoin is available on cryptocurrency exchanges such as Gate.io. The first step is to sign up for a Gate.io account and go through the KYC process. Add funds to your account and learn how to buy Toncoin on the spot or futures markets.

News on TON

Recently, TON has taken a big step to solve the large-scale data storage issue. The new storage ecosystem, TON Storage, aims to allow users to exchange files of different sizes while providing financial incentives to node operators to host various users.

Useful References

For the latest information on TON, you can visit:

• The official website
• Twitter
• Telegram
• Github
• Linkedin

Take Action On TON

Check out the TON price today and start trading your favorite currency pairs.

• TON/USDT