TON is pushing the potential of blockchain technology to new heights. TON (The Open Network) was originally created by the Telegram Messenger development team and has since been taken over by the community to build a fast, secure, and scalable blockchain network. As a blockchain project at the forefront of technological innovation, TON has attracted many developers and users with its high performance and flexibility, especially TON's theoretical maximum TPS can reach millions. With the continuous growth of the ecosystem and the continuous iteration of technology, TON is expected to become an important role in the blockchain field in the future, promoting the popularity and development of decentralized applications.

It is worth noting that OKX Web3 launched a new App Connect protocol on September 6, 2024, which currently supports the TON ecosystem and will soon be expanded to popular networks such as EVM and Solana. This upgrade allows developers to easily call the OKX App wallet directly through the Telegram Mini App to implement DApp interactive operations such as signature transactions. Developers only need to connect to App Connect to quickly build their own DApps on TON and Telegram, which not only simplifies the development process, but also lays the foundation for building a richer Web3 ecosystem.

This issue is the 02nd issue of the "Developer Story" column. It will better understand the TON world from the perspectives of Anatoly Makosov, a core developer of TON, and Wang, the head of OKX Web3 TON ecosystem access. The questions in this issue cover TON's technological progress, developer construction, community governance, ecological security, and other aspects, aiming to gain an in-depth understanding of the insights and plans of TON's core developers.

Key points at a glance:

1. TON's long-term goal is to promote the large-scale popularization of the encryption industry and decentralized technology, rather than short-term trends; our short-term clear goal is to achieve 500 million monthly active users within 5 years.

2. I appeal to Solidity programmers - if you don’t want to be left behind by history like Prolog or Fortran programmers, don’t be afraid of new things.

3. OKX Web3 launched a new App Connect protocol on September 6, 2024, which currently supports the TON ecosystem and will soon expand to popular networks such as EVM and Solana.

4. Telegram project developers do not have to choose TON chain, they can choose any blockchain.

5. All services and products in the TON network have been developed completely by the community in a decentralized manner, and our core team is only responsible for the implementation of the blockchain kernel.

6. I think only Bitcoin and TON will continue to exist in the future, and other blockchains look outdated - the development cycle is too slow and the goals are unclear.

7. We have great respect for Bitcoin and Ethereum - they opened the era of the encryption industry. But to be honest, they have not achieved much in terms of large-scale applications.

8. In addition to setting the stage for excellent projects in the TON ecosystem, OKX Web3 also promotes the construction of the TON ecosystem through technology.

9. At present, we TON Core are not standard setters, but pioneers.

10. We need to pay attention to ordinary users who are not yet familiar with blockchain. Perhaps such a user will find that having a TON passport with visa-free access to 256 countries is more attractive than another complex mining protocol.

11. The OKX OS service provided by OKX Web3 provides TON developers with a complete set of development tools, SDKs, APIs and documents, which greatly simplifies the development process. Developers can quickly build their own applications on TON and connect to the OKX Web3 wallet to solve project deployment and operation needs in one stop.

Detonating chain games, sharing TON's technological innovation and progress

TON core developer Anatoly Makosov: These games with tens of millions or hundreds of millions of users choose TON because TON seems to be the only blockchain that can handle such a high load. Although there were indeed some challenges in the process, we finally successfully completed the launch of all these games.

On May 16, 2024, Notcoin, a gaming project with 35 million users, launched its tokens on the TON blockchain and was listed on the world’s top exchanges. On the first day of the game’s launch, the TON blockchain welcomed 1 million new Notcoin holders. Also noteworthy were the token launches of Avacoin in July and DOGS in August, which had 6 million and 50 million monthly active users, respectively. Next, this year, projects such as Hamster Kombat, a gaming giant with 239 million players, and TapSwap, with 56 million players, will launch tokens on TON, which are quite impressive even by Web2 standards. We feel like we are truly pioneers.

TON has an asynchronous architecture that is capable of dynamic sharding. However, in practice, there are indeed some implementation and infrastructure issues, which we work hard to solve in a timely manner to keep up with the increasing load. We release planned kernel updates every 1-2 months, some of which have improved resource consumption and performance of certain parts by dozens of times. This year we plan to release a major "accelerator" kernel update and update the decentralized weak validator penalty system to encourage network validators not to save money on hardware.

In addition, we are proud of our fixed network fee system, which does not fluctuate with network load. If the price of TON tokens rises, the fee can be reduced by voting across the entire network, as we have demonstrated this year.

Wang, Head of TON Ecosystem Access, Web3, OKX: On this topic, I would like to add a few words from the perspective of the three parties. The explosion of blockchain games on the TON ecosystem is mainly attributed to two key technical factors:

First, the deep integration of TON with Telegram and the TON Connect protocol have brought unique advantages to the TON ecosystem in the field of blockchain games, especially in terms of blockchain game promotion and user growth. Users can directly access blockchain games and other DApps on TON in the Telegram application, and achieve smooth wallet connection and interaction through TON Connect. This greatly reduces the user's entry threshold, making blockchain game participation more convenient, thereby promoting the rapid growth of the user scale.

Second, TON's sharding technology is another core advantage. This architecture significantly improves the network's throughput and scalability, and can effectively cope with the needs of high-concurrency scenarios. This is particularly important for blockchain games, which usually need to handle a large number of small transactions and real-time interactions. TON's sharding architecture ensures that the network can still operate stably even with a high number of users, avoiding congestion problems, thereby providing a smooth gaming experience and ensuring that players can seamlessly interact and trade in games.

Through these two major technological innovations, the TON ecosystem provides strong support for the development of blockchain games.

Why does TON ecosystem application start with GameFi, not DeFi?

TON core developer Anatoly Makosov: The goal of the TON blockchain is to promote the large-scale popularization of the encryption industry and decentralized technology, which is why we always focus on the needs of ordinary users rather than the short-term trends in the encryption industry. I am surprised why other blockchains focus almost entirely on the speculative component of cryptocurrencies. After all, speculators and traders are not the mainstream of the global population.

The TON network has a comprehensive system of tools, covering DEX, lending protocols, liquidity pledge, etc. We hope that users can play DeFi on TON as easily as playing small games, and can quickly get started.

On other blockchains, ordinary users can't even figure out how to send tokens. We need to solve this problem first before more people can use DeFi. This year we launched USDT on the TON network. According to Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, this is the most successful USDT launch in history, thanks to TON's low fees that do not depend on changes in network load, integration that can be directly in the Telegram wallet, and the ability to pay network fees with USDT.

What TON brings to developers

TON core developer Anatoly Makosov: First of all, I think the main force that attracts developers is the growing number of users in the TON ecosystem. Since the beginning of the year, the number of accounts on the TON blockchain has increased more than 10 times from 4 million to 53 million. In addition, with the emergence of a series of tools, which enable developers to create Mini Apps in Telegram and easily link them to the TON network and TON wallet through TON Connect, this provides blockchain developers with the opportunity to reach nearly 1 billion Telegram users.

Secondly, we are not compatible with EVM because they belong to different architectures: EVM is a non-scalable synchronous architecture, while TVM is a scalable asynchronous architecture. But if you consider programmers around the world, Solidity programmers are actually very few. Our target is ordinary users who are not yet familiar with blockchain, not traders. At the same time, we are also targeting ordinary developers who have not yet been exposed to blockchain, such as developers of languages such as Java, Python, C++, JavaScript, etc., rather than the few Solidity developers.

We have our own development tools and programming languages because the asynchronous structure of TON is fundamentally different from the previous generation of synchronous blockchains. This enables developers to build scalable decentralized products. Some developers are lazy about learning new things. But programmers also moved from single-threaded languages to multi-threaded programming before blockchain. I appeal to Solidity programmers - if you don't want to be left behind by history like Prolog or Fortran programmers, don't be afraid of new things.

We are constantly developing our own development tools and programming languages. Alexander Kirsanov, the maintainer of the KPHP language, and Anton Trunov, who created the Scilla language for the Zilliqa blockchain, have joined TON. We plan to present major updates at the Gateway conference this fall.

The TG+TON ecosystem is often compared to WeChat, which dominates many businesses. What is the division of labor between you and the community?

TON core developer Anatoly Makosov: At this stage, all services and products in the TON network have been fully developed by the community in a decentralized manner. Our core team is only responsible for the implementation of the blockchain kernel and provides network guidelines to provide a platform for the community. The Telegram team has created a top-level messaging application with rich features and provides a public Bots API and Mini Apps API.

OKX Web3 TON Ecosystem Access Head Wang: Indeed, TON needs to focus more on the construction of the underlying protocol, especially in terms of infrastructure, and there is still room for improvement compared to mature public chains such as Ethereum. In the future, as TON infrastructure improves, this will not only help attract more developers to the TON ecosystem, but will also pave the way for a wider range of application scenarios in the future.

Do projects that come to TG to start a business have to choose TON in the end?

TON core developer Anatoly Makosov: We have no mandatory requirements for developers, they can choose any blockchain. For example, the HOT project, which originally ran on Telegram, chose the Near blockchain, but failed in its first token offering because the Near blockchain was overloaded and could not continue to issue. Therefore, the HOT project has now moved to the TON blockchain. However, due to the viral nature of Telegram, those products that choose to launch on Telegram are more likely to gain a sufficient user base.

OKX Web3 TON Ecosystem Access Manager Wang: Although Telegram startups do not necessarily have to choose the TON chain, there are indeed many projects that choose to deploy on other public chains such as EVM. However, due to the deep integration of TON and Telegram, projects that choose to deploy on the TON chain have more obvious advantages in the Telegram ecosystem. The seamless connection between the TON chain and Telegram can greatly simplify the user experience of the project, improve user acquisition and participation, and at the same time use Telegram's huge user base and powerful social functions to effectively promote project development.

TON's current and future position in the public chain ecosystem

TON core developer Anatoly Makosov: We follow our own path and do not blindly follow the trend. Our uniqueness attracts more innovators with new ideas rather than practitioners of crypto scams. At the same time, the crypto trend has not bypassed TON - we have experienced many engraving crazes and Meme coin crazes.

TON is a community-driven project. No one, including the core team, can make changes on the blockchain alone. We can only provide options to improve the network for the community to choose. The voting function is built into the core of the TON blockchain, which is in line with the principles of decentralized projects. Major changes need to be voted on through the TON.vote platform and then voted on by validators.

I think only Bitcoin and TON will continue to exist in the future, and other blockchains will look outdated - the development cycle is too slow and the goals are unclear.

TON has a clear goal - to achieve 500 million monthly active users in 5 years. We are steadily moving towards this goal - the number of monthly active users has grown more than 20 times since the beginning of this year, from 221,000 MAU to 4.5 million MAU.

What contribution does TON make to industry standardization?

Anatoly Makosov, TON Core Developer: I think the industry has not yet reached the stage of standardization. We have great respect for Bitcoin and Ethereum - they opened the era of the crypto industry. But to be honest, they have not achieved much in terms of large-scale application.

At present, we at TON Core are not standard setters, but pioneers. Our development results will become industry standards in the future. However, we hope to introduce a standard now. Last fall, we conducted a blockchain performance test and demonstrated 100K TPS of complex smart contract execution, which set a world record. The problem we have is that there is currently no unified system to measure and compare the performance of blockchains. CertiK, a well-known auditing agency, cross-validated our results and created a leaderboard in their system. This has the potential to become something like the Guinness World Records in the blockchain space.

TON is a Proof-of-Stake blockchain with its own Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus protocol called Catchain. This year we reached 400 independent validators on the network, and 600M TON (more than 10% of the total supply) participated in the verification to ensure the correctness of the network. Although there have been no hacks on the TON kernel or smart contracts written by the core team during this time, we will not be too complacent.

In addition to the in-depth and long-term testing by the core team, we also work with top global auditing agencies and actively conduct bug bounty activities in the community. For example, USDT's smart contracts have been tested by Trail of Bits, Zellic, and public cracking competitions in addition to being tested and reviewed by the core team.

What technical developments are you concerned about in achieving large-scale application of TON?

Anatoly Makosov, TON core developer: We need to focus on ordinary users who are not yet familiar with blockchain. Perhaps such a user will find that having a TON passport with visa-free access to 256 countries is more attractive than another complex mining protocol.

This year, we developed a new TON wallet smart contract v5.0, which will support two-factor authentication, social key recovery in case of loss, and has implemented gas-free transactions, that is, no TONcoin is required to pay network fees. In addition, we now have TON Mintless Token technology, which allows projects to instantly distribute tokens to hundreds of millions of users at a network cost of less than a dollar.

However, we still face many challenges, both technical and non-technical. It is difficult to single out a single problem - we need to improve the kernel, infrastructure, APIs, and applications. We also need to rethink the user experience (UX) and user interface many times until they are intuitive enough for everyone. TON has an inherently scalable architecture, excellent technology, and Telegram as a rocket launcher, so we are able to solve all these challenges. Many other blockchain projects lack these advantages.

OKX Web3 TON Ecosystem Access Head Wang: I personally pay close attention to the development of TON's wallet smart contracts.

The latest v5 contract version introduces capabilities such as gas-free transactions and off-chain calls, which undoubtedly lays the foundation for opening up more Web2 usage scenarios. This has a lot in common with the EIP-4337 wallet, but it also has unique advantages. This greatly improves the user-friendliness, flexibility and security of the TON chain wallet.

When users can use the TON chain wallet 'unconsciously', combined with Telegram's inherent user base in Web2, this is bound to promote TON's further large-scale application.

What has OKX Web3 done in TON ecosystem construction?

Wang, head of OKX Web3 TON ecosystem access: First, as a leading Web3 portal, OKX Web3 wallet has natively integrated the TON chain ecosystem. Users can manage TON assets in one stop through the OKX wallet, and smoothly complete cross-chain Swap, NFT, Defi, and access TON DApps on mobile and desktop. At the same time, OKX Web3, in conjunction with TON project parties and The Open League, launched a series of Giveaway and Cryptopedia activities, which exposed and attracted high-quality projects on TON and helped more Web3 users onboard to the TON ecosystem.

Second, in addition to providing a stage for outstanding projects in the TON ecosystem, OKX Web3 also promotes the construction of the TON ecosystem through technology. We actively cooperate with TON core developers to jointly promote some TON Enhancement Proposals (TEPs) and continuously improve infrastructure to help developers better build applications in the ecosystem and make the TON ecosystem healthier and more sustainable. In addition, in terms of tools, the OKX OS service provided by OKX Web3 provides TON developers with a complete set of development tools, SDKs, APIs and documents, which greatly simplifies the development process. Developers can quickly build their own applications on TON and connect to the OKX Web3 wallet to solve project deployment and operation needs in one stop.

Third, OKX Ventures, as the investment department of OKX, has established a fund in cooperation with TON, actively participated in the investment and incubation of TON ecological projects, and helped start-up projects grow on the TON network. Through financial support and resource guidance, more projects are helped to start and achieve commercialization in the TON ecosystem.

In short, OKX Web3 has been committed to promoting the innovation and application of blockchain technology, and the TON ecosystem is one of the areas we are very optimistic about. Our cooperation with the TON ecosystem will focus on promoting the growth and development of more projects within the ecosystem and providing users with the best multi-chain support and developer tools. However, not only for TON developers, OKX Web3 is very friendly to all public chain developers in terms of technology and resources. In the future, we will continue to optimize our products and provide more convenient services for users and developers. We look forward to promoting the implementation of more application scenarios and attracting more users and developers to the Web3 ecosystem through resource sharing and technical exchanges.

About the "Developer Story" column

Web3 developers have made important contributions to the development of the encryption industry. Their innovative spirit and technical capabilities have injected lasting vitality and momentum into the development of the entire industry, not only improving the technology itself, but also providing support for future application scenarios and business models. But although they are active, they are rarely paid attention to. The "Developer Story" column launched by OKX Web3 and Chain Catcher aims to understand the development context, technical insights, latest trends, market changes, hot comments, etc. of different public chains from the perspective of developers through dialogues with core developers of different public chain ecosystems and the OKX Web3 technical team, enhance the voice of Web3 developers, get closer to these most active and interesting people, and provide them with the greatest support.

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