Title: TON: A Revolutionary Blockchain Network for the Future
Author: cynicsong.eth
Source: mirror
TON: A Journey Through Time
In 2018, the founders of Telegram, the Durov brothers, embarked on a quest to find a blockchain solution that could accommodate the massive user base of their messaging platform. Unable to find an existing blockchain that could meet their needs, they decided to create their own Layer 1 chain, which they named Telegram Open Network, or TON for short.
Months later, TON raised over $1.7 billion through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) for its native token, Grams. In 2019, the Telegram team released relevant documents and launched two testnets.
However, in October 2019, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Telegram, accusing them of conducting an unregistered securities offering. As a result, the TON mainnet launch was put on hold, and eventually, the Telegram team decided to abandon the project and refund the ICO funds to investors due to the ongoing legal battle with the SEC.
In 2020-2021, the NewTON team revived the development of TON based on open-source materials. In May 2021, the community voted to rename the long-term stable testnet, Testnet 2, as Mainnet. The NewTON team also rebranded itself as the TON Foundation, a non-profit community dedicated to supporting and developing TON.
This is the TON we know today, officially known as The Open Network.
The Essence of TON
From the very beginning, TON was designed to cater to social networks with a massive user base. TON Blockchain is the blockchain of Telegram. In the context of outdated technology, mainstream blockchains couldn’t achieve the necessary Transaction Per Second (TPS) to handle millions of potential transactions per second from Telegram’s billions of users.
The TON team’s solution was to create multiple chains instead of relying on a single blockchain. TON employs sharding technology, which distributes transaction processing across multiple chains, creating a network of blockchains known as the blockchain of blockchains.
Specifically, TON Blockchain adopts a three-tier pyramid architecture consisting of the masterchain, workchain, and shardchain.
The masterchain serves as the central coordination hub for TON Blockchain. It contains protocol parameters, a collection of validators, and shares related to the current working workchains and their subordinated shardchains. Lower-level chains submit their latest block hashes to the masterchain, enabling cross-chain message reading and ensuring the latest state.
While the masterchain provides coordination and anchoring, the actual work is done by individual workchains. TON can accommodate up to 2^32 workchains, each of which can be customized with flexible rules, such as address format, transaction types, native tokens, and smart contract virtual machines, while adhering to interoperability standards. It’s important to note that workchains are virtual concepts, existing as collections of shardchains and not as physical entities.
To enhance processing efficiency, each workchain is further divided into shardchains, which can reach a maximum of 2^60. Shardchains follow the rules set by the workchain and distribute the workload among themselves, with each shardchain only serving a subset of all account collections.
In a traditional sharding approach, shards are typically divided from top to bottom based on account address prefixes. For example, if a workchain is evenly divided into 256 shards, accounts with address prefixes of 0x00, 0x01, …… 0xFE, and 0xFF would be allocated to different shardchains. In TON’s sharding mechanism, shards are dynamically formed from the bottom up. Each account initially acts as a shardchain, and they are combined into larger shardchains based on their relationships to ensure sufficient transaction volume for each shardchain.
When we review the architecture of TON Blockchain, it bears some resemblance to network architecture. We have reason to believe that the Durov brothers, who come from a networking background, drew inspiration from network architecture when designing TON. Initially, each network device operates independently (each account acts as a shardchain), but due to frequent communication between some network devices, they are combined into a local area network (larger shardchains formed from single point shardchains). Communication between different local area networks occurs through upper-level nodes (interoperability between shardchains achieved through the masterchain).
In essence, TON Blockchain is another form of network – TON of the network.
Building the Network
As a distributed system, a blockchain requires communication among nodes through a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network, rather than relying on centralized servers and Client-Server (CS) architecture. For single-chain blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, propagating blocks and transactions through gossip protocols is sufficient. However, TON’s multi-chain architecture imposes higher requirements on the network protocol.
TON nodes communicate with each other using the Abstract Datagram Network Layer (ADNL) for data transmission. ADNL abstracts the network layer of the traditional TCP/IP layered architecture. To facilitate identity recognition, nodes communicate using Abstract Network Addresses instead of IP addresses. These addresses are 256-bit integers derived from ECC public keys and other parameters, enabling communication encryption and providing the foundation for shardchain separation.
TON utilizes the Kademlia Distributed Hash Table (DHT) to locate other nodes in the network. When a client needs to submit a transaction to a specific shardchain’s validator, it can use a key to search for the validator’s location in the DHT.
The most crucial part is the Overlay network. As each shardchain operates independently and does not concern itself with transactions on other shardchains, TON needs to build Overlay subnetworks for each shardchain within the TON Network. These subnetworks are open to nodes that wish to participate in communication, and they use gossip protocols based on ADNL for internal communication.
With its unique network protocol design, TON addresses, transmits, and applies data, enabling an unlimited sharding solution and achieving high TPS. This is TON by the network.
Empowering the Network
In today’s era of “thousands of chains,” a public blockchain must stand out by highlighting its advantages. Ethereum boasts Total Value Locked (TVL) and an extensive application ecosystem, Solana thrives on its vast developer community, and Arbitrum excels in reliability and operational capabilities. So, what are TON’s strengths? In a world where scalability solutions have matured and “high performance” is no longer the key determinant of success, how does TON maintain an active ecosystem?
The answer lies in networks: social networks and network services.
From a social network perspective, we need to consider the needs of Telegram users. Telegram is a hub for international trade, which gave rise to TON Payment. The built-in wallet within Telegram lowers the entry barrier for users. Users also have a desire to showcase their artistic aesthetics, which is where TON NFTs serve as an excellent social tool. Lastly, gaming with friends brings joy, and GameFi allows for rapid expansion through social networks.
Network services are TON’s expertise. TON has reimagined traditional web services, creating the internet of the future. Anonymous eSIM realizes Telegram’s initial vision of a privacy-protecting social network. TON Domains improve readability, making it easier for users to find each other within the TON network. TON URLs, TON Proxies, and TON WWW aim to provide a decentralized, secure, and reliable internet for everyone. TON Storage is an upgraded version of Torrent, ensuring the security of user data through decentralized storage.
TON’s use of blockchain technology goes beyond fundraising; it aims to build a more decentralized, secure, and reliable internet. This is TON for the network.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, judging by the current level of activity in the TON ecosystem, it seems that there isn’t a significant demand for a more decentralized, secure, and reliable internet. This is a challenge faced by all blockchain projects today. Most people enter the blockchain ecosystem for financial gains rather than a genuine need for decentralized services. Without the wealth effect, projects struggle to sustain attention.
Fortunately, the TON ecosystem is well-funded. TON has established a multi-million-dollar ecosystem fund dedicated to investing in and incubating projects within the TON ecosystem. With the largest monthly active user base in the entire Web3 world, we have reason to believe that the future of the TON ecosystem will experience a breakthrough. It is definitely worth continuous attention.
