The Open Network (TON)

Comprised of the independent Telegram chat app and the TON smart contract blockchain network.

Basics

• Started in:
• Based in: Russia
• TON launched in 2018
• Telegram is a chat app similar to Whatsapp. It is widely used in the crypto community.
• As FlatOutCrypto put it (23-10-2019):

"Why use Telegram?

Because you really can’t be bothered to keep up to date with crypto but want to waste time anyway, so you join mindless project Telegram groups to kid yourself that you’re just “keeping up to date with developments”.

Any good stuff on it?

If you’re lucky you’ll stumble upon a few sensible groups with focused discussion. Many project groups can be good sources of debate prior to the influx of bots and moonbois at ICO. And you’ll be forced to use it at some point if you hold assets for substantial periods because otherwise you’ll miss (or more realistically, feel like you’re missing) important project updates.

Also, where else can you go to abuse the project teams of coins you’ve lost money on? Or at least, the third party community admins they’ve hired to manage the groups for them."

• Was planned to launch their own blockchain in 3-2019 but got closed down (12-5-2020) as an official Telegram project. However, the TON blockchain itself kept running and is still used by Telegram (1-12-2022).

History and Forks

• From Cointelegraph (6-5-2020):

"Telegram recently delayed their open network, TON, and their cryptocurrency, GRAM, once again. There is one related project that has not experienced these setbacks, however. TON OS, an operating system for the TON blockchain, will soon get an open source release.

The project’s core infrastructure developers, TON Labs, are planning to open source the main components of the TON OS on GitHub tomorrow. Mitja Goroshevsky, CTO at TON Labs, confirmed the news to Cointelegraph on May 6."

TON Labs to issue a token known as TON Cash within a month

As reported by industry publication, ForkLog, the release includes TON Node in the Rust programming language, command line interface, TON Multi signature Wallet smart contract, as well as tools for launching TON validators. The report notes that within a month, TON Labs also plans to issue its decentralized browser, Surf, its staking pool, DePool, and the token known as TON Cash.

In conjunction with the TON OS open source release, TON Labs is joining the Free Software Foundation (FSF), a major free software movement. As such, all the components of the TON OS are being launched as a free software. According to the developers, the idea of a permissionless blockchain in a closed source is absurd. TON Labs reportedly felt that joining the FSF will help them maintain free use of the application as well as the TON blockchain."

• From Decrypt (29-5-2020)

"The Chinese community group for the Telegram Open Network today announced that it is launching its own version of the blockchain. The Chinese project to launch TON is one among several trying to keep Telegram’s magic alive. There’s Free TON and NewTON, both of which want to get the Telegram Open Network online, using open source-code published by Telegram."

Audits & Exploits

• Bug bounty program can be found [insert here].

Token

Utility

• From Poloniex (3-12-2022):

"$TON is used for transaction processing fees as well as cross-chain transaction fees. dApps that build on TON can also receive the token in exchange for services their app provides. $TON is also the governance token of the network, and is used to vote for decisions that affect the future of the network."

TON Technology

• Whitepaper or docs can be found [insert here].
• Code can be viewed [insert here].
• Consensus mechanism: PoS
• Algorithm:
• Virtual Machine:
• Development language used:

Transaction Details

• Capacity (TPS): 1million tps (3-12-2022).
• Latency: under 6 seconds (3-12-2022).

How it works

• From Poloniex (3-12-2022):

"Its purpose is to provide a platform for decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts. It is based on a multi-blockchain architecture and consists of a master chain, several working blockchains, and sharding protocols.

Some of TON’s Components:

1. The TON P2P (peer-to-peer) Network which is for accessing the TON Blockchain, sending transactions candidates, and giving blockchain updates to a client
2. Distributed storage, or TON Storage, which archives copies of blocks and snapshots.
3. TON Proxy, which users can anonymously access and use the network through.
4. A distributed hash table.
5. A platform for services that feature UI that is browser/app-like for easy use through a smartphone.
6. TON DNS, which, like DNS for the Internet, assigns human-readable names to smart contracts, accounts, services, network nodes, and smart contracts.
7. A platform for micropayments called TON Payments

So about that “1million tps”. That sounds crazy, right? Well, this is made possible due to TON’s unique architecture. The TON blockchain is made up of a “collection of two blockchains”. That is, a master blockchain (or masterchain) and several working blockchains (or workchains). The master blockchains are responsible for being a repository of the protocol’s general information, information about validators, workchains and their shards, and the hashes of the work- and sharchains’ most recent blocks. The workchains, on the other hand, contain information on events like smart contract transactions and value-transfer. In terms of consensus, the blockchain uses a proof of stake mechanism.

What is interesting about the workchains is that they themselves can be split up into shard blockchains (or shardchains). Each shardchain is tasked with handling transactions for a subset of accounts. The network has an impressive block time of 5 seconds, and can split workchains into 260 shards, allowing for much less network stress and congestion."

Projects

• From Decrypt (1-12-2022):

"Pavel Durov—the messaging platform’s founder and CEO—announced that the company would begin building “non-custodial wallets” and “decentralized exchanges” that would let millions of users safely trade their crypto. The executive argued that the project should be more than feasible: the development of Fragment, Telegram’s decentralized auction platform, “took only 5 weeks and 5 people, including myself,” according to Durov. The marketplace, which launched last month, has already raked in $50 million worth of Toncoin by selling tokenized usernames on the blockchain."

Competition

• A comparison (21-4-2020) with Status and Signal was done by Status.

Team, investors, Partners

Team

• TON Labs; The project’s core infrastructure developers
• After the first failure, the TON Foundation took over.

Investors

• Part of (9-3-2020) the portfolio of Arrington XRP Capital.
• Raised $90M for a new ecosystem fund continuing its recent attempts to get the Telegram-founded blockchain project back into gear (7-7-2022).