The TON Network

Overview

TON is a third-generation blockchain using a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. Nikolai and Pavel Durov developed it in 2018. The Durov brothers are the brains behind Telegram Messenger. The TON Community now runs it after the duo relinquished their roles.

As a third-generation blockchain, the network is designed to offer lightning-fast transactions in a user-friendly interface and at ultra-cheap costs. It tackles the significant challenges that first and second-generation chains face.

Aside from its impressive speeds that can process millions of transactions in a second, the blockchain’s ecosystem has all the ingredients necessary to birth an authentic Web 3:0 internet. It comes complete with an anonymous network, decentralized storage, Domain Name System (DNS), and instant payments. These are only a few among a host of its other features that define the decentralized ecosystem as is currently constituted.

Its architecture eases linking all existing blockchain to form one multi-chain or decentralized network.

Technical Advantages of the TON Ecosystem

The various advantages that TON seeks to provide exist in the possibilities that each key component of the network offers. They include:

Infinite Multi-Chain Scalability

TON Blockchain, the backbone of the network, is a scalable multi-chain blockchain designed to enable millions of transactions per minute. Aside from the lightning-fast speeds, its proof-of-stake consensus and other features provide a relay base for up to ²⁹² parachains or accompanying networks. This feature forms the basis of the possibility of developing a genuine Web 3:0 out of the TON ecosystem.

Instant Off-Chain Value Transfers

One of the driving needs to create a blockchain out of Telegram Messenger was to monetize the platform by leveraging its more than 400 million users. A straight-out approach was to make the Telegram Open Network (the precursor to the TON Network) a micropayments platform. The TON Community has sustained the idea. The Network is completing TON Payments, a feature that will serve as a micropayments channel between users, services, and even bots. The network incorporates safety precautions in the development to ensure that value transferred on TON Payments is as secure as transactions completed on-chain.

Immunity from Censorship

The network is developing TON Proxy, an anonymizing layer covering TON Nodes. Designed to work like the Invincible Internet Project (I2P), TON Proxy would allow developers to build decentralized VPN services and blockchain-based TOR substitutes. This feature aims to avail complete anonymity and make protection of online privacy possible. Besides, TON wants to merge the capabilities of Ton Proxy with those of the TON P2P Network and TON DNS to create a feature capable of protecting decentralized applications (dApps) from censorship.

Eases Blockchain Interoperability

TON has a masterchain with enough space to perch up ²³² workchains. Each of the workchains on the TON masterchain can operate with a unique ruleset. Essentially, these workchains can have different formats for addresses, transactions, native currencies, virtual machines for housing their smart contracts, among other aspects, but still communicate using TON’s set of basic rules.

TON’s design would make it possible to bring all existing blockchains together in a unified decentralized umbrella. Besides, it eliminates performance and decentralization challenges witnessed in the other existing attempts to solve the interoperability problem.

Provides a Path to Hastening Mainstream Adoption of Blockchain

The network is building a DNS feature that would hasten the mainstream adoption of blockchain when complete. TON DNS wants to assign human-readable names to smart contracts, accounts, network nodes, and blockchain services. By doing so, glancing at blockchain using the tool would seem like surfing the web.

Safe Storage and Easy Exchange of Huge Amounts of Data

The network is setting up TON Storage, a decentralized files storage technology that its users would access via the blockchain’s P2P Network. Think of its as an enhanced version of Dropbox because it comes with heightened simplicity. The torrent-like solution would be driven by smart contracts to make it more accessible. Besides, it is already showing great promise regarding storing and exchanging vast volumes of data.

Brings dApps to the Smartphone

The network has launched TON Services, an adaptive platform that targets third-party services. It presents dApps and smart contracts in smartphone-like interfaces and brings down the complexities associated with accessing blockchains to an experience akin to browsing the World Wide Web.

The TON Blockchain

At the center of the solutions highlighted above is the TON Blockchain. It is the backbone of the TON system and comes with a uniquely scalable architecture that is flexible enough to patch up ²⁹² accompanying blockchains. The said architecture has incorporated some bold and innovative methods and approaches to bring it to the reality of actualizing millions of transactions every second. These four particularly stand out:

Infinite Sharding Model

First and some second-generation blockchains are struggling under the weight of scalability. TON has devised a solution to this problem. Blockchains on TON can split and merge automatically depending on the load demands. The model ensures that the block generation speed does not change even when transactions swell.

Besides, the system does not experience a pile up of transactions, queues or cost hikes due to the increased demand.

Advanced Proof-of-Stake Consensus

TON’s advanced PoS consensus demands that validator nodes apply deposit stakes. In doing so, the network is guaranteed that all valid transactions settle. Besides, the consensus uses a more advanced version of the Byzantine Fault Tolerant protocol. The combination saves resources and allows the network to direct node computing capabilities towards handling smart contracts and finalizing transactions, increasing speed and efficiency.

Instant Hypercube Routing

This smart routing mechanism hastens exchange between networks regardless of their sizes. The feature makes the ratio of data transfer time to the number of blockchains tenable and scaling the network to handle millions of chains is possible without compromising the processing speed.

2D Distributed Ledgers

The design of TON eliminates the need for unnecessary forking. TON has a self-healing mechanism that allows it to grow new valid blocks over invalidated blocks, saving resources and ensuring that valid transactions are not compromised because of unrelated errors.

In Summary

TON has a value proposition that intends to address all the challenges plaguing first and second-generation blockchains. Besides, its interoperability approach makes the blockchain ecosystem a lot more approachable in functionality. Overall, its features would hasten blockchain adoption because they simplify access and make blockchains reachable through tools that mankind is already familiar with.