01 Introduction
TON (The Open Network), a project that has been almost ignored in the Chinese-speaking world, has recently ignored market fluctuations and has been rising steadily. Its market value has quietly approached the top ten.
What is TON? How is it different from ordinary public chains? Why is it called Telegram's own child? Today, this article will help you understand The Open Network.
02 What is The Open Network
The Open Network is a blockchain project created by Telegram. Originally named Telegram Open Network (TON), it aims to build a distributed, high-performance blockchain platform that supports decentralized applications and digital assets.
TON consists of a masterchain and multiple workchains, each of which can be divided into multiple shardchains. Through this parallel expansion mechanism, TON can theoretically achieve a processing capacity of millions of transactions per second.
In addition, TON uses its own TVM virtual machine, which is incompatible with Ethereum's EVM, and its smart contracts are written in a language called FunC. TON adopts the Block Proof of Stake (BPoS) consensus mechanism, and validators who hold and stake TON's native cryptocurrency participate in block verification and consensus.
03 Brief History of Development
2018: Brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, founders of Telegram Messenger, begin designing a blockchain project for Telegram Messenger called Telegram Open Network (TON). They raise $1.7 billion in a private placement.
October 2019: The Telegram team released the design documents for the TON blockchain and launched two testnets. However, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Telegram, accusing it of conducting an unregistered securities offering.
May 2020: The Telegram team is forced to stop the development of The Open Network and return the $1.7 billion raised in the private sale to investors. The project code and all available tokens in the network are made public for anyone to mine.
2020-2021: A small team of open source developers, NewTON, continues to develop TON and is renamed the TON Foundation.
April 2022: TON Foundation announced the establishment of a $250 million ecosystem fund, TONcoin Fund, and raised $527 million.
June 2022: TON completes the transition from POW to POS, ending POW mining.
February 2023: By voting, the TON community freezes 171 inactive mining wallets holding more than 1.081 billion TON, accounting for 21% of the total supply.
04 What is the difference
The core difference between TON and other public chains lies in the concepts of “resource payment” and “asynchronicity”:
Resource payment: In TON, each smart contract needs to pay for its own resource costs instead of users paying transaction fees. Smart contracts need to hold enough TON tokens to pay for the resources required for their operation, otherwise they will be automatically deleted.
Asynchronicity: Calls between smart contracts in TON are asynchronous rather than atomic. This design allows for higher scalability, but also increases the complexity of development and maintenance.
This architecture enables TON to achieve high performance, but also limits its development in the DeFi field. However, TON is more focused on mass adoption, positioning it as a decentralized application and service platform.
05 Network Ecology & Economic Model
On-chain ecosystem: TON’s on-chain ecosystem is just getting started, with a total TVL of only $10 million. Major projects include Fanzee and Megaton Finance, which are funded by the TONcoin Fund.
Economic model: The initial total supply of TON is 5 billion, and 98.55% of the tokens were distributed through POW mining in the early stage. The community voted to freeze inactive wallets and took measures to destroy half of the transaction fees to reduce the circulating supply. However, the distribution of TON tokens is still relatively concentrated, with the top 100 whale addresses holding more than 50% of the total tokens.
06 Telegram and TON Lead Crypto Mass Adoption
Telegram uses TON as the core of its ecosystem, providing Web3 infrastructure support for DApp developers. Through applications such as @wallet, users can directly transfer transactions, purchase services, and other operations in Telegram. This low-threshold usage method makes it possible for the large-scale adoption of cryptocurrencies.
07 Conclusion
The combination of TON and Telegram provides a promising prospect for the development of Web2.5. However, TON's token concentration problem still poses potential risks. Nevertheless, TON's potential for large-scale user adoption is still huge, and it is expected to lead the crypto industry into the next era.
