Today, we are going to focus on a blockchain project that has recently attracted a lot of attention – The Open Network. In case you have not heard of Telegram Messenger, they have their layer-1 blockchain you might want to know about.
What is TON Blockchain?
The TON Blockchain, which is linked with the messaging app Telegram, is steadily gaining ground in the Web3 space, indicating the promise of the TON ecosystem in the future.
What is the History of The Open Network (TON)?
It all started one day when the Telegram Messenger team started looking for some blockchain applications that could be easily integrated into a messaging platform. The team also wanted to support its users with this platform. Even when they did not have one at their disposal that suited their description of the perfect partner, they opted to build it from scratch.
The plan was initially brought forward by two Russian brothers, Nikolai and Pavel Durov,, when they launched the Telegram Open Network, TON, and its associated digital asset known as Telegram’s Gram in 2018. Its launch drew large interest and funded a very impressive $1.7 billion during its ICO, which positioned it as one of the most popular cryptocurrency ICOs ever.
Having all this support and funds at their disposal, the team at Telegram began working on the realization of this new Layer 1 blockchain. As TON was close to being fully developed, the US Securities and Exchange Commission intervened and filed legal charges against Telegram for using an unregistered securities sale, which halted the launch of the project. A legal match started later in 2020, and Pavel Durov announced that Telegram was out of the project.
After paying $18.5 million in fines to the SEC, the team offered refunds to investors and put a halt to further development of TON and its associated test network called “testnet2”. At that time, TON’s code was open source and could be found on GitHub, which means that anyone could contribute to the program. Finally, deciding that the project just had too much potential to waste,
A small team of developers led by Anatoliy Makosov, a software developer, and Kirill Emelyanenko, a programmer with a Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics, decided to take up the mantle and continue the development of TON. Both developers are still part of the TON Foundation team and work on core development.
Though the current network is entirely separate from Telegram, in 2021, Pavel Durov said that he was glad the project would go on and wished the new team good luck.
Jumping to the year 2021, the Telegram Open Network received a small redesign. The original testnet2 by the Telegram team became Mainnet, the new ton team became TON Foundation, and the whole project was renamed as The Open Network – an attempt to retain the acronym TON.
How Does TON Work?
To ensure that the Open Network is fast, flexible, and inexpensive, the architecture relies on the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, sharding, and a virtual machine. Because of this, TON says it can have millions of users and conduct millions of transactions per second. This record was set in 2021; thus, at the time of this video, it had only processed 100,000 transactions per second.
Sharding, which is relatively newer to scalability, is the division of the network into several segments that are interconnected, yet work separately, providing the platform for multiple transactions at the same time. TON also uses dynamic sharding. This implies that these pieces of the network can be split or merged depending on the load of the network.
And of course, there is TON’s virtual machine, which seems to be introducing some ideas here. For instance, TON’s fee model taps into the contract developer to fund the operations while excluding users from the equation. Every smart contract has a TON token balance that is spent on the resource consumption of the specific smart contract.
Another example is asynchronous architecture utilized by the TON network as a way of processing differently multiple transactions simultaneously.
What is Toncoin and How is it Used in TON?
Toncoin or TON is the utility token of The Open Network (TON). Thus, it can be used at points of sale as a transaction fee, for staking, and for gas payments within the network. TON runs as a DAO and $TON owners can participate in governance voting for proposals within the network.
How is Telegram Connected to the TON Blockchain?
While Telegram distanced itself from the direct control of the TON blockchain, the connection between Telegram and the platform remains strong. Telegram is the fourth most used messaging platform in the world and has millions of daily active users, approximately 200 million per month.
One of the interesting peculiarities within Telegram is integration with mini-applications, which are also called mini-apps. Such applications, particularly games, are developed on the TON blockchain and enable users to make money.
In the next tweet, you can see one of these mini-games which is Hamster Kombat
What Are the Advantages of Telegram’s Web3 Wallet?
Telegram has recently added internal Web 3.0 wallets which, among other things, are best compatible with stablecoins and DeFi. This integration also improves the overall usability of applications by providing transaction facilities and places Telegram in front of the continuously growing DeFi market.
Why Is Telegram’s Familiarity with Crypto Community Beneficial?
For instance, the cryptocurrency community has already employed Telegram covering areas like communication, bots, or project development. This increased level of familiarity reduces the entry barrier for the users and developers, increasing their level of participation and development on the TON Blockchain.
Conclusion
For now, TON is actively progressing in the sphere of blockchain with an exceptional integration with Telegram and the services and functions it is adding more and more. Looking at TON from the perspective of further development and implementation of new capabilities, it looks like this project may be of equal interest to both experienced and new users of blockchain technologies. There are many opportunities to become involved in TON and possibly profit from it: from staking to interacting with community bonus programs to paying with TON.
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