Written by @drawesomedoge

Compiled by Nicky, Foresight News

With voluntary technical contributions, the NEWTON team won the recognition of the @Telegram official team in 2021 and successfully completed the technical handover. This event was hailed as the most significant "community takeover" event in the history of blockchain.

Introduction: Join the NEWTON team on a mission journey

When I joined the NEWTON team, our primary mission was clear and firm: to continuously optimize developer tools while maintaining the stability of the TON testnet2 code.

Since we cannot directly manage the ton-blockchain GitHub repository, but code iteration and upgrade are imperative, we have established the NEWTON organization. To ensure smooth network upgrades, we actively encourage the community to adopt the validator developed by the NEWTON team as the standard version.

From the establishment of the NEWTON team to June 2021, we have achieved many groundbreaking results and completed many infrastructure construction projects. Next, let’s take a closer look at the top 10 contributions that were crucial to the early development of TON.

1/ mytonctrl: automated node management tool

Our first contribution is mytonctrl, a powerful automation tool for node installation and validator setup.

It has a range of core functions such as wallet creation, contract deployment, transaction history retrieval, and even a DNS registration system. It is worth mentioning that the DNS system at that time was not the same as the modern NFT packaging DNS system we see today.

In addition, mytonctrl can configure validators, light servers, and light clients, making it easy to access and parse node data. In 2021, we further added CPU-based mining scripts and automated power consumption testing to simplify the TON mining process.

2/ tonmon: a blockchain health visualization tool

It is not enough to just have nodes and get data, we also need more visualization tools to monitor the health of the blockchain in real time.

To better monitor the health of the blockchain, we developed a tool called tonmon. It tracks a range of key metrics, including block creation time, shard status, dPoS (delegated proof of stake) election schedule, number and weight of validators, and mining contract status. These features allow us to respond quickly to any anomalies in the network.

In the early days, the network was quite small, with only about 80 validators running worldwide.

3/ tonmine: monitoring giver contracts

We developed tonmine, a tool designed to track mining activity on the TON blockchain. While the TON blockchain had both large and small contributors in its early days, as of 2021, only ten small contributors are still operating. tonmine displays daily mining statistics for each contract, with a single contract producing an average of 20,000 TON per day, and a total of 200,000 TON per day across all contracts combined.

Mining difficulty varies significantly between givers, mainly depending on the number of miners participating in mining. Some givers have low difficulty due to few miners, while others have extremely high difficulty due to many miners. tonmine provides us with valuable mining activity data to help us better understand the mining ecology of the TON blockchain.

4/ Cross-chain bridge

Before the TON blockchain established the jetton or NFT standards, we already deeply understood the importance of cross-chain compatibility. Therefore, the NEWTON team set out to develop a native TON cross-chain bridge, which is designed for ERC-20 tokens on EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatible chains and has been successfully tested on bridge.ton.org. This innovation enables seamless transfer of assets between TON, Ethereum, and BSC (Binance Smart Chain), greatly improving the interoperability and flexibility of the blockchain ecosystem.

Through this cross-chain bridge, users can easily transfer assets from one blockchain network to another without worrying about compatibility issues, which greatly broadens the application scenarios and usage scope of assets. This is of great significance to promoting the popularization and application of blockchain technology.

5/ @cryptobot: Telegram robot wallet

In 2021, before the launch of Telegram Mini Apps, one of our team members proactively developed the @cryptobot Telegram robot wallet. This wallet initially supported BTC, TON, BNB, and USDT, providing users with a variety of asset management options.

Subsequently, with the launch of the Telegram mini-app, the @cryptobot wallet also underwent a comprehensive upgrade. This transformation not only improved the functionality and user experience of the wallet, but also made it more in line with the usage habits of the Telegram platform, bringing users a more convenient and smooth asset management experience.

6/ toncenter: Simplifying blockchain data access

The launch of toncenter has greatly simplified the process for developers to obtain blockchain data. They no longer need to bother building a full node, nor do they need to delve into liteclient or liteserver, and they don’t have to worry about serialized data formats. toncenter provides an intuitive and easy-to-use public API that allows various wallets and blockchain browsers to easily access on-chain data.

While the infrastructure of the TON blockchain has evolved over time, with more API provider options emerging, such as tonxapi.com, toncenter has remained in place to serve developers, a testament to the robustness of its design and its importance in the blockchain data access space.

7/ explorer.toncoin.org: TON’s first blockchain explorer

TON’s first blockchain explorer, explorer.toncoin.org, is a tool built into its core codebase. Although it performs amazingly well in data retrieval speed, its data presentation is too professional and technical for most ordinary users to understand.

8/ ton.sh: A new generation of blockchain browser

To address the complexity of explorer.toncoin.org, we crafted ton.sh, an explorer with a public API, after overcoming the challenges of deserializing blockchain data.

ton.sh focuses on providing core functions including wallet balance query, transaction record viewing, and the most important memo function. Before TON Connect or complex DeFi contracts were available, the memo was crucial for early users of TON. It played the role of command operation, especially in the deposit operation of the exchange.

Although more advanced browsers such as TONScan and TONViewer have emerged, ton.sh still attracts much attention as an important milestone in the development of TON. It not only witnesses the continuous advancement of TON technology, but also provides us with valuable experience and inspiration.

9/ TonWeb: The indispensable JavaScript SDK

Since TON smart contracts use relatively complex programming languages, Fift and Func, the NEWTON team created TonWeb. As a JavaScript SDK, TonWeb greatly simplifies the creation, deployment, and transaction process of wallets, providing developers with more convenient and efficient tool support.

Through TonWeb, developers can easily implement various operations on the TON blockchain without having to master the underlying technical details such as Fift and Func, thereby lowering the development threshold and accelerating the development of the TON ecosystem. The launch of this SDK has laid a solid foundation for the widespread application of the TON blockchain.

10/ ton wallet: My first TON wallet

This TON wallet originated from the Telegram era and is the first TON wallet I came into contact with and used. Surprisingly, it is still in use and maintains good functionality.

Historic recognition: an open letter from the NEWTON team to the @Telegram official team

Summary of the open letter:

As of June 2021, the NEWTON team has made significant contributions to the TON blockchain ecosystem. We are committed to running public Liteserver, DHT servers and archive nodes to ensure stable operation of the network and safe storage of data.

During this period, our team member tolya-yanot wrote a heartfelt open letter to the TON blockchain team on behalf of NEWTON (link: https://github.com/ton-blockchain/TIPs/issues/33). In the letter, we reviewed in detail the efforts and achievements made by the NEWTON team in the TON blockchain field over the past year, and sincerely requested the TON blockchain team to grant us the corresponding permissions of the GitHub organization so that we can participate more deeply in the development and maintenance of the project.

The letter specifically mentioned two leaders and core team members of the NEWTON team.

And, yes, myself, Dr. Awesome Doge, is also honored to be among them.

At that time, I just saw this open letter as a good attempt to show our contribution to the TON network, and did not expect any response. However, unexpectedly, the @Telegram official team responded on June 30, 2021. This response not only surprised us, but also marked the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the TON blockchain.

Looking Back and Forward: Developer’s Notes

Looking back on this extraordinary journey, the early contributions of the NEWTON team were not limited to just writing code. Every line of code, every tool we built, every sleepless night of maintenance—all these unremitting efforts together laid the foundation for the glory of TON today.

As we head into 2024, TON is experiencing explosive growth, with thousands of builders flocking to the ecosystem, which is a powerful validation of what we believed in those challenging early days - that TON’s potential is worth our continued efforts.

So, where am I now?

NEWTON members are now all over the world, each contributing to TON in their own unique way. As the only member of the team who speaks Mandarin, I continue to focus on the needs of developers and the development of the Asian region. Through my team, @TONX_Studio, we are committed to building critical infrastructure for the TON ecosystem: from developer tools to educational platforms to services tailored for Asian users, we are working hard to promote the popularity and application of TON around the world.

The NEWTON spirit is passed down from generation to generation. This is just the beginning.