Rebirth of TON: Technical advancement and prospects of Telegram Open Network

Author: Cynic Shigeru, Compiler: CGV FOF

TL;DR

• History of TON: Telegram was founded by the Durov brothers and began developing its own blockchain - Telegram Open Network (TON) in 2018 to meet the needs of its billion-level users. TON raised over $1.7 billion through the ICO of its token $Grams. But in 2019, Telegram gave up further development of TON due to prosecution by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). However, between 2020 and 2021, the NewTON team restarted TON development based on open source materials and successfully renamed it The Open Network.
• Technical features of TON: TON is designed for large user groups. Its characteristic lies in the use of sharding technology, which allows multiple chains to process transactions in parallel, which is called “blockchain of blockchains”. TON’s architecture is divided into three layers: masterchain, workchain and shardchain. The masterchain is the coordination center, and actual transaction processing is completed by each workchain and shardchain. In addition, TON’s sharding is dynamic and can be combined into larger Shardchains based on the interactive relationships between accounts.
• TON’s network structure: TON nodes use Abstract Datagram Network Layer (ADNL) to communicate, which provides the basis for interaction between different Shardchains. Utilizing the Kademlia Distributed Hash Table (DHT) to locate other nodes in the network, TON also creates Overlay subnetworks specific to each Shardchain to ensure effective communication. *Applications and prospects of TON: TON is not just about obtaining funds, but about building a decentralized, safe and reliable Internet. For example, features such as TON eSIM, TON domain name, and TON storage are all designed to enhance user privacy and data security. Although the current demand for decentralization does not seem to be high, TON has set up a huge fund for its ecology and relies on its huge user base, which is expected to attract attention and growth in the future.
• Although TON encountered challenges during its initial launch, its innovative technology and vision for a future decentralized network have continued to attract attention in the blockchain field. Its strong financial support and large user base have also laid a solid foundation for its future development.

TON Past

In 2018, the Durov brothers, the founders of Telegram, began to explore blockchain solutions suitable for Telegram. At that time, there was no blockchain capable of supporting Telegram’s billion-level user base, so they decided to design their own Layer 1 chain, named Telegram Open Network, or TON for short.

A few months later, TON raised over US$1.7 billion through the ICO of TON’s native token $Grams. 2019. The Telegram team has successively released relevant documents and launched two testnets.

In October 2019, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Telegram, accusing it of conducting an unregistered securities offering. The Telegram team suspended TON’s mainnet launch and ultimately chose to give up in its fight with the SEC, halting TON’s development and returning ICO funds to investors.

From 2020 to 2021, the NewTON team restarted the development of TON based on open source data. In May 2021, the community voted to rename the long-term stable Testnet 2 to Mainnet. The NewTON team also changed its name to the TON Foundation to support and develop TON as a non-profit community.

This is the TON we are familiar with now, and its full name is The Open Network.

Of the Network

From the very beginning of the story, TON was built for social networks with a huge number of users. TON Blockchain is Telegram’s blockchain. Back then, under the outdated technology system, the TPS of mainstream blockchains could not be effectively improved. How could it handle Telegram’s billions of users and the millions of transactions that could be generated per second?

The idea of the TON team is that the TPS of a single blockchain can only reach dozens of times per second, so why not build more chains? TON uses sharding technology to horizontally distribute the work of processing transactions to multiple chains, building a blockchain network composed of multiple blockchains, called a blockchain of blockchains.

Specifically, TON Blockchain adopts a pyramid-shaped three-layer architecture, each layer accommodates a type of blockchain, namely masterchain, workchain and shardchain.

Masterchain is the center for coordination of TON Blockchain, and there is only one. The chain includes the parameters of the protocol, the set of Validators, and for the share, the current working Workchains and subordinate Shardchains. The lower chain will submit its latest block hash to Masterchain, so that when the lower chain needs to read cross-chain messages, it can determine the latest status.

The Masterchain plays a coordination and anchoring role, but what actually works are the Workchains. The system can accommodate up to 2^32 Workchains. Under the premise of meeting interoperability standards, each Workchain can flexibly customize rules, such as address format, transaction type, native token, smart contract virtual machine, etc. It is worth noting that Workchain is only a virtual concept. It exists as a collection of Shardchains and does not exist as an entity.

In order to improve processing efficiency, each Workchain is further divided into Shardchains, up to 2^60. Shardchain follows the rules set by Workchain and distributes the level of work to all Shardchains. Each Shardchain only serves a part of the set of all accounts.

For ordinary sharding, sharding is top-down, and the dividing condition is often the prefix of the account address. For example, if the Workchain is divided into 256 shards on average, accounts with address prefixes of 0x00, 0x01, … 0xFE, 0xFF will be divided into different Shardchains. In TON’s sharding mechanism, sharding is a bottom-up dynamic process. A more appropriate idea is to first treat each account as a Shardchain, and then combine them into a larger Shardchain based on the connections between them to ensure that each account Each Shardchain has a sufficient number of transactions.

At this point, let’s review the architecture diagram of TON Blockchain. Does it look somewhat similar to the network architecture? We have reason to believe that the Durov brothers, who came from a network background, were inspired by network architecture when designing TON. In the initial situation, each network device worked independently as a single point (each account acted as a Shardchain). Since the communication between some network devices was very frequent, they were combined into a local area network (from a single point Shardchain to a more complex Shardchain). Large Shardchain), different local area networks communicate with upper-layer nodes (Shardchains interoperate through Masterchain).

TON Blockchain is actually another form of network, this is TON of the network.

By the Network

As a distributed system, blockchain requires communication between nodes through the P2P network, but cannot communicate through centralized servers and CS architecture. For single blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, propagating blocks and transactions through gossip protocols can meet the needs. However, for TON, the multi-chain architecture puts forward higher requirements for network protocols.

Abstract Datagram Network Layer (ADNL) is used for data transmission between TON nodes. ADNL abstracts the network layer in the traditional TCP/IP layered architecture. In order to facilitate identification, nodes do not need to consider IP addresses, but use Abstract Network Addresses to communicate. The address is a 256-bit integer, which is a hash value based on the ECC public key and other parameters, which facilitates encryption and decryption of communication between nodes, which provides the basis for segmentation between different Shardchains.

TON uses Kademlia Distributed Hash Table (DHT) to locate other nodes in the network. When the client needs to submit a transaction to the Validator of a Shardchain, it can search in the DHT through the Key to obtain the location of the Validator.

The most critical part is the Overlay network. Since different Shardchains operate independently and do not care about or have the ability to process transactions on other Shardchains, it is necessary to build an Overlay subnetwork for each Shardchain within the TON Network and open it to nodes that wish to participate in communication. The Overlay network uses the gossip protocol based on ADNL. communication.

Relying on the unique network protocol design, addressing, transmission, and application are determined separately, TON is able to implement unlimited sharding solutions and obtain ultra-high TPS. This is TON by the network.

For the Network

In today’s era of “thousands of chains”, if a public chain wants to stand out, it must exploit its strengths and avoid weaknesses and highlight its own advantages. Ethereum’s advantage lies in its TVL and application ecosystem, Solana’s advantage lies in its huge developer ecosystem, and Arbitrum’s advantage lies in its Technical reliability and operational capabilities, the TON blockchain is in a relatively new but rapidly emerging position in the current blockchain market, and TON needs to differentiate itself with its unique multi-chain architecture and high scalability.

First, its technical foundation makes it a highly flexible and scalable platform. Thanks to its innovative multi-chain architecture, it can easily handle large volumes of transactions, which solves the scalability issues faced by many other blockchains.

Secondly, TON’s close integration with Telegram also gives it a foothold in the competition. Telegram’s large user base provides TON with a large potential user base that many emerging blockchains do not have.

However, it also faces some challenges. Other blockchain projects have already established large communities and ecosystems, so TON needs to continuously work hard to attract developers and users. Additionally, it needs to compete with other blockchain projects with powerful features and innovative solutions, which means it must constantly innovate to maintain its competitive advantage.

In the competition with other mainstream blockchains, TON must prove its technical advantages and practicality, which will be the key to its future development. By demonstrating the security, speed and efficiency of its system, it may attract more business and individual users.

Overall, the TON blockchain is in a very competitive and dynamic market environment. While it has some significant advantages, it also needs to prove its worth, especially in a market where many mature and successful projects already exist.

So what are the advantages of TON? When various expansion plans mature and “high performance” is no longer the key factor that determines the success or failure of the chain, how does TON maintain the vitality of the ecosystem?

CGV Research believes that there are two directions: one is social networks and the other is network services.

From a social network perspective, you only need to consider what needs users have when using Telegram. There is a large amount of import and export trade on Telegram, so with TON payment, the wallet built into Telegram has lowered the threshold for use; users have a need to display artistic aesthetics, and TON NFT is a good social tool; playing games with friends is The happiest thing is that GameFi can undergo rapid fission through social networks.

Network services are TON’s core business. Everything about the traditional network has been redone by TON, which is called the future of the Internet. The anonymous eSIM realizes the ideal when Telegram was founded: a social network that protects privacy; the TON domain name improves readability and allows users to find each other more easily in the TON network; the TON website, TON agent, and TON WWW hope to serve everyone Provide a decentralized, safe and reliable Internet; TON storage is an upgraded version of Torrent, using decentralized storage to ensure the security of user data.

TON uses blockchain technology not just to obtain funds, but also to build a more decentralized, secure and reliable Internet with the help of blockchain. This is TON for the network.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, judging from the current level of activity in the TON ecosystem, it seems that not many users want a more decentralized, secure, and reliable Internet. This is also a problem faced by all current blockchain projects. Most people enter the blockchain ecosystem for gold hunting, rather than truly needing decentralized services. If there is no wealth creation effect, it will be difficult for the project to gain sustained attention.

Fortunately, the TON ecosystem is not short of money. TON has established an ecological fund worth hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in and incubate projects within the TON ecosystem. Relying on the largest number of monthly active users in the entire Web3 world, we have reason to believe that the TON ecosystem will explode in the future, which deserves continued attention.