TON Ecosystem

What is TON Blockchain

TON is an abbreviation for The Open Network. A project embodying a decentralized Web3 infrastructure, which aims to solve the problem of scalability and poor interoperability of blockchains.

The TON blockchain has its origins in 2018. A few years after the launch of the most popular messenger Telegram, which has more than 900,000,000 active users worldwide. At that time, Pavel Durov, together with his brother Nikolay Durov published the first technical document describing the concept of Telegram Open Network.

And their main task was to transfer the popular messenger Telegram to TON in order to make the most anonymous and secure application protected by its own proxy. At the time, TON was described as a platform for applications and services, literally an alternative to payment processors like Visa or MasterCard.

Today many people associate the TON platform with Pavel Durov and this is partly true, but the platform is owned by the community and a whole group of developers. It indicates that the system is in the hands of independent developers operating in accordance with the principles of decentralization. Also, The Open Network ecosystem is being developed under the careful guidance of the TON Foundation, whose staff is steadily replenished with experienced professionals who come to the community through public competitions.

Interesting fact. The Open Network is a spin-off of TG crypto project, Telegram Open Network, which the team could not launch as a result of regulatory pressure. As the development was in the free availability, several groups of developers took it as a basis for their own projects. Among them is The Open Network team.

Partners & investors

Over the course of its existence, the TON ecosystem has acquired an increasing number of strategic partnerships and investors.

Among the key partners:

• Telegram
• Tether
• Pantera Capital
• OKX
• ByBit
• Blockchain.com
• Wintermute
• Kenetic and many others.

Key mechanism of The Open Network

The Open Network system operates based on the PoS algorithm. However, according to the documentation, TON also uses the concept of Sharding.

Let’s look at key layers that provide high throughput and scalability:

• Masterchains with shared protocol information.
• Workchains are individual blockchains that communicate with the masterchain. They can use their own virtual machines, address and transaction formats, and their own tokens to pay for transactions, but remain compatible with the masterchain.
• Workchains are made up of shard blockchains, which only contain data on small sets of addresses. Shardchains of the same blockchain have the same block formats and run on the same virtual machine as the ‘parent’ blockchain.

Shardchains are responsible for the transactions of ‘their’ accounts, each workchain is responsible for its own shardchains, and the masterchains is responsible for all workchains. This interoperability allows the shardchains to communicate with each other, invoking smart contracts and conducting transactions in tokens.

TON developers are building a truly efficient, scalable and high-speed ecosystem. And as of today, it can be argued that The Open Network blockchain is outperforming ecosystems like Solana or Ethereum.

For example, at the end of 2023 TON set a world record by completing more than 100,000 transactions per second:

• At the peak of testing, the speed reached 108,409 TPS.
• TON performance significantly exceeded the efficiency of traditional bank payment systems and most popular blockchains.

As of today, TON has become much more than just a platform for P2P transactions. The TON ecosystem is underpinned by more than 1000 key components, including Exchanges, Wallets, NFTs Services, Explorers, Bridges, VPN and more.

But there are a few main constituent elements:

1. TON blockchain
2. DNS domain name system
3. Storage system
4. Websites

Also:

• Crypto-wallets
• Services of TON
• Staking section
• Integrated payment processing network
• Proxy system
• Explorer of applications
• Bridge to transfer between TON, ETH and Binance Smart Chain
• Register .ton domains
• Virtual phone numbers on the Fragment Marketplace

Token TONCoin

Toncoin (TON) is a native token on the TON blockchain. The cryptocurrency endows the ecosystem with high-speed transactions and a variety of decentralized applications that are closely tied to the Telegram messenger.

Usage of Toncoin token:

• Paying for advertising in Telegram.
• Buying usernames on Fragment.
• Transactions and transfers in the ecosystem.
• Participation in decentralized applications (DApps). TON cryptocurrency is also used in staking, integration with other cryptocurrencies and platforms and participation in voting.

Interesting fact. In July 2020, the Telegram team put all available Gram coins into smart contracts that could be mined by any user on equal terms.

This model was called Initial Proof of Work (IPoW). Thus, The Open Network became the first blockchain in history to combine the two consensus PoW and PoS.

Conclusion

As we can see, TON is able to provide a convenient infrastructure for mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. In tandem with Telegram, users get all functions in one place: money transfers, games, trading platforms, data storage services, etc.