The Open Network (TON)
The Open Network (TON) is a decentralized, layer-1 blockchain originally developed by Telegram that supports scalable applications through a multi-chain architecture. It includes components like TON Blockchain, DNS, Storage, Sites, and Proxy, and is designed for high throughput, cross-chain interoperability, and decentralized internet infrastructure. [1][2]
Overview
The Open Network (TON) is a decentralized layer-1 blockchain originally developed by Telegram in 2018 and now maintained by the community. It uses a multi-blockchain architecture with a masterchain, multiple workchains, and sharding to support decentralized applications, smart contracts, and related services such as TON DNS, TON Storage, TON Sites, and TON Proxy. Designed for scalability and high performance, TON has demonstrated the ability to process tens of thousands of transactions per second, with potential for much higher throughput. Its infrastructure emphasizes cross-chain interoperability and aims to provide the foundation for a decentralized internet ecosystem. [2]
History
Since 2017, the team at Telegram had been developing a new blockchain platform called the TON (Telegram Open Network) Blockchain and a native cryptocurrency called Gram. TON was a blockchain project created by brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov to build a platform intended to disrupt the decentralized application space by leveraging Telegram’s wide user base. The platform aimed to offer speed and scalability, which were considered important for the mass adoption of cryptocurrency. Through TON, Telegram users were expected to be able to buy, transfer, and store value in ID-verifiable wallets facilitated by the GRAM coin.
Telegram and its affiliates had not made any promises or commitments to develop applications or features for the TON Blockchain or to otherwise contribute to the TON Blockchain platform after its launch. Rather, the Telegram team hoped that the decentralized community of third-party developers would contribute to the TON ecosystem by developing applications and smart contracts. In January 2018, the team released a white paper and a detailed technical paper, which provided insight into the features and design of the project. TON was described as a platform for decentralized apps and services that could scale and support millions of transactions per second. [3] [4]
Gram
Gram was the native cryptocurrency Telegram planned to launch to establish a platform for decentralized applications (dApps). To fund the development of Telegram and the TON blockchain project, Telegram attracted investments through a private Gram offering. A two-step legal scheme was employed: the Gram purchase agreement was structured as a future contract that allowed investors to receive tokens once TON launched. As futures were only sold to accredited investors, the offering was exempt from registration as securities under Regulation D of the Securities Act of 1933, on the basis that once TON was operational, the Grams would have utility and would not be considered securities. [27]
The offering ran in 2 rounds, each taking in $850 million. The first round offering was 2.25 billion tokens at $0.38 each, with a minimum purchase of $20 million, and the second offering was 640 million tokens at $1.33 each, with a minimum purchase of $1 million. As of April 2018, the firm had reported raising $1.7 billion through the ongoing ICO. [29][28]
Development of TON
The development of TON took place in an isolated and opaque manner. The testnet launch was initially scheduled for Q2 2018 with the mainnet launch in Q4, but the milestones were postponed several times. The testnet was launched in January 2019 with a half-year deviation from the plan. [30]
In May 2019, the company released the lite version of the TON blockchain network client. In September 2019, the company released the complete source code for TON nodes on GitHub, making it possible to launch a full node and explore the testnet. The launch of the TON main network was scheduled for October 31, 2019. [31][32]
Telegram vs SEC
The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) had concerns about Gram's private sale and contacted Telegram, but after months of communication, both sides could not agree. On October 11, 2019, a few weeks before the planned TON launch, the SEC obtained a temporary restriction order to prevent the distribution of Grams. SEC argued that the initial purchasers of Gram would be acting as underwriters, and the resale of Gram, once distributed, would be an unregistered distribution of securities. [5]
After a lengthy legal battle between Telegram and the SEC, Judge P. Kevin Castel of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York agreed with SEC that the sale of Grams, the distribution to initial purchasers, and the highly likely future resale should be viewed as a single "scheme" to distribute Grams to the secondary market in an unregistered security offering. The "security" consisted of the whole set of contracts, expectations, and understandings around the sale and the distribution of tokens to the interested public, not only the Grams. In this case, the initial purchasers acted as underwriters that planned to resell tokens, not consume them. The restrictions on Gram distribution remained in force for purchasers based in and outside the U.S., as Telegram had no tools to prevent U.S. citizens from purchasing Grams on the secondary market. [5][33]
Following this development, the Telegram Open Network team announced that they could not launch the project by the expected 30 April 2020 deadline. [3]
On May 12, 2020, Pavel Durov announced the end of Telegram's active participation with the TON blockchain. [6][8]
On June 11, 2020, Telegram settled with the SEC U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission and agreed to return $1.22 billion as "termination amounts" in Gram purchase agreements, and pay an $18.5 million penalty to the SEC. Telegram also agreed to notify the SEC of any plans to issue digital assets over the next three years. The judge approved the settlement on June 26, 2020:
"New and innovative businesses are welcome to participate in our capital markets, but they cannot do so in violation of the registration requirements of the federal securities laws," Kristina Littman, chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Cyber Unit, in a statement.
In 2020, Telegram repaid TON investors $770 million and converted $443 million into a one-year debt at 10% interest, raising its total liabilities to $625.7 million. On 10 March 2021, Telegram placed 5-year bonds worth $1 billion to cover the debts it returned by 30 April 2021. [10]
Post-SEC
Since TON (Telegram Open Network) was developed as an open-source software project and its code was publicly available on GitHub, other projects started to develop the technology.
On May 7, 2020, the Free TON project was launched using the TON technology that had been developed. By January 2021, the community of the project reached 30,000 people. Free TON's token titled "TON Crystal" or just "TON" was distributed as a reward for contributions to the network. Of 5 billion tokens issued at the moment of launch, 85% were reserved for users, 5% for validators, and 10% for the developers (including 5% dedicated to TON Labs, the developer of TON OS middleware for TON blockchain, which is the essential part of Free TON). [5][34][35]
On June 29, 2021, the Telegram team said they would consider granting the use of the ton.org domain and GitHub repository to the TON Foundation, in response to an open letter. By August 4, 2021, the domain was transferred to the TON Foundation.
TON Foundation
After Telegram quit the project in May 2020, an open-source developer community led by Kirill Emelyanenko and Anatoliy Makosov initiated the NewTON open-source community to develop further and support TON on open-source principles. Developers who never worked for Telegram, members of the open developer community, validators, winners of public TON Blockchain Contests, and crypto enthusiasts from around the world joined them. [12] [23] [24]
Upon researching TON source code, architecture, and documentation, NewTON resumed developing in compliance with the original whitepaper and ideas. [12]
In May 2021, the NewTON team was renamed as TON Foundation (The Open Network)— a not-for-profit community focused on the support and development of the network. [12]
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov published a post on his official Telegram channel on December 23, 2021, backing the TON Foundation project. [25]
“When Telegram said goodbye to TON last year, I expressed the hope that future generations of developers would one day carry on with our vision of a mass-market blockchain platform, So I was inspired to see the champions of Telegram’s coding contests continue developing the open TON project, which they rebranded to Toncoin.” - he wrote.
TONCOIN
The Telegram native crypto, Gram, was rebranded into TON coin (The Open Network) after the TON Foundation took over the abandoned project in 2020. [36]
TON coin is the principal cryptocurrency of The Open Network (TON) blockchain, particularly its masterchain and basic workchain. It is used for transaction fees, securing the blockchain through staking, deciding how the network develops, gas payments (i.e., smart-contract message processing fees), and settling payments. [11][4]
Background
In November 2019, Telegram Open Network testnet2 launched, and 5 billion coins were minted, with a small fraction (1.45%) distributed to developers and testers. In May 2020, after the SEC prohibited Telegram from issuing Grams to investors, Telegram ceased its work on the TON ecosystem, and testnet2 tokens were placed into 20 Proof of Work Giver smart contracts. Finally, in May 2021, by a majority vote of network participants, testnet2 was promoted to mainnet. Coins continued to be distributed by Proof of Work Giver contracts. [11]
Tokenomics
The total supply of TON coins was originally limited to 5 Gigatons (i.e., 5 billion TON coins). This supply will gradually increase, as rewards to validators for mining new masterchain and shardchain blocks accumulate. The expected inflation rate of 2% per year will double the total supply of TON coins (to 10 Gigatons) in 35 years. This inflation represents a payment made by all community members to the validators for keeping the system up and running. [4]
Utility
The TON coin can be used as a processing fee for smart contracts transactions, cross-chain transaction fees, lending capital to validators to earn interest, and payment for blockchain-based domain names (DNS). It can also act as validators’ stakes required to maintain the blockchain, and payments services provided by apps built on the platform, and it is integral to TON's on-chain governance program. [11]
TON Blockchain
The TON Blockchain is the foundational infrastructure of The Open Network, structured to maximize scalability, flexibility, and speed. It operates using a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism and is organized into three hierarchical layers: masterchain, workchains, and shardchains.
At the top, the masterchain is the main blockchain that secures the network and contains metadata essential for coordinating the entire system, including validator information, protocol parameters, and references to all other chains. All transactions and state updates across the network are finalized on the masterchain.
The second layer consists of workchains, which are individual blockchains with potentially unique rules, such as different transaction formats, address types, virtual machines for smart contracts, and even native tokens. Despite their differences, all workchains remain compatible with the masterchain, ensuring cross-chain communication and coherence across the system.
Each workchain is subdivided into shardchains—parallelized sub-chains that divide the workload across multiple validators. This bottom-up sharding design, known as the Infinite Sharding Paradigm, allows TON to generate new shards as needed, enabling elastic scalability. This architecture supports the network’s goal of processing millions of transactions per second without bottlenecks. [5]
TON Key Components
TON Payments
TON Payments is a platform for micropayments and a micropayment channel network. It can be used for instant off-chain value transfers between users, bots, and other services. Safeguards built into the system ensure these transfers are as secure as on-chain transactions. [12]
TON Proxy
This is a network proxy/anonymizer layer for TON nodes. Similar to I2P, it allows the building of decentralized VPN services and blockchain-based TOR alternatives to achieve anonymity and protect online privacy. Combined with the TON P2P Network and TON DNS, TON Proxy gives decentralized apps immunity to censorship. [12]
TON Proxy Launch
The TON Proxy, compatible with HTTP Proxy, launched on September 30, 2022. A host of TON wallets said they would implement TON Proxy directly in their wallet applications and extensions, meaning that all TON wallet owners would access the TON network without downloading additional applications. [22]
TON DNS
TON DNS makes blockchain mainstream by assigning human-readable names to accounts, smart contracts, services, and network nodes. With TON DNS, browsing blockchain becomes similar to surfing the World Wide Web. [12]
TON DNS Launch
The TON Foundation, on June 30, 2022, announced the launch of TON DNS. Similar to other popular crypto-related domain names like “.eth” or “.crypto,” the domain zone for TON DNS is “.ton,” and it enables users to access decentralized applications simply. With TON DNS, users can use simple and short domain names instead of typing in a long string of letters and numbers. A domain name will also be able to unlock a wallet address. [19]
TON Storage
TON Storage is a distributed file-storage technology accessible through the TON P2P Network. This torrent-like technology relies on smart contracts for availability and has strong potential concerning storing and exchanging large amounts of data. [12]
TON Storage Launch
The TON Storage was launched on January 5, 2023, taking on similar projects like Filecoin and Storj. TON Storage works similarly to internet-based peer-to-peer file sharing that uses torrents. But instead, it relies on the TON blockchain network to transfer data files of any size, which are backed up and encrypted without needing centralized web servers. With the launch of TON Storage, TON-secured sites can be hosted on the network, a move that TON Foundation founding member Anatoliy Makosov said marks [12]
“the next step in realizing our vision of a decentralized, open internet.”
TON Services
TON Services provides a versatile platform for third-party services. It enables smartphone-like friendly interfaces for decentralized apps and smart contracts, and a World Wide Web-like decentralized browsing experience. [12]
TON Wallets
TON Wallet is a Web3 wallet that provides fast, secure, blockchain-based payments without intermediaries. TON Wallets give users direct control without middlemen or bankers. [37][38]
TON's non-custodial wallets include: Tonkeeper, Tonhub, TON Wallet, and Coin98 wallet, while its custodial wallets include @wallet and @crypto bot. [38]
Telegram Wallet Bot
On April 26, 2022, TON blockchain announced on Twitter the development of cryptocurrency payment options on Telegram using a Wallet Bot. [40]
"It’s a new way to send Toncoin without transaction fees to any Telegram user. With this service, you’ll no longer need to enter long wallet addresses and wait for confirmations"
Ton Nominator Pools
TON nominator pools are a proof-of-stake mechanism that allows holders to lend their profits to nominators to earn profit. It also allows validators to be rewarded based on how much stake they hold. Nominator Pools are assets of a validator and nominators managed by a smart contract. Smart contracts guarantee the correct use of borrowed coins. [42]
Governance
By design, network modifications within TON are only possible if approved by the majority of validators via the proof-of-stake consensus. Changing network software, configuration, or state is impossible by bypassing the vote. [12]
Telegram Marketplace
Telegram launched a blockchain-based marketplace called Fragment on October 26, 2022, enabling the auction of rare and short Telegram username handles using The Open Network (TON) blockchain. Initially focused on four
- and five-character usernames, the platform set minimum bids—such as 10,000 Toncoin for four-letter handles—and allowed individual users to buy, sell, and transfer ownership of usernames across different marketplaces, with all ownership transparently recorded on-chain.
The idea for the marketplace emerged after successful TON DNS auctions earlier that year, and Telegram positioned the initiative as part of a broader Web3 integration strategy. Within its first month, sales on Fragment surpassed $50 million, with high-profile handles like @news fetching nearly $1.7 million. The platform marks a shift in digital identity control, offering verifiable ownership of social media identifiers and expanding the use case for blockchain in mainstream communication apps. [15] [16] [17]
TON x Donate
On December 23, 2021, TON announced a partnership with Donate, saying that users would soon be able to make donations and pay for their subscriptions in Toncoin. At the same time, channel administrators can collect their income in cryptocurrency. [20] [21] [41]
Developments
Ton Foundation x Libre
In April 2025, The Open Network (TON) Foundation partnered with Libre, a decentralized infrastructure firm specializing in real-world assets (RWAs), to introduce a $500 million tokenized bond fund tied to Telegram.
In the statement, the Telegram Bond Fund (TBF) offers blockchain-based access to institutional-grade yield opportunities. The TBF signals TON’s official entry into the growing RWA sector and aligns it with other prominent networks that support real-world asset tokenization. [43]
The TBF brings a portion of Telegram’s $2.35 billion outstanding bonds onto the TON blockchain, allowing institutional and accredited investors to engage with traditional financial products through a decentralized format. The fund aims to support Telegram’s current and future bond offerings, offering compliant on-chain exposure through a trusted RWA platform. Max Crown, CEO of TON Foundation, said: [43]
“Libre’s infrastructure bridges the gap between compliance and decentralization, unlocking powerful new opportunities for TON’s community to engage with RWAs in a secure and accessible way.”
TON x Ethena
On May 1st, 2025, at the Token2049 event held in Dubai, TON and Ethena announced a partnership which will see the deployment of Ethena’s USDe and Ethena Staked USDe (sUSDe) natively within the TON blockchain. [44]
The deployment involves two major Ethena integrations, including one in the custodial Wallet in Telegram and the second in the TON Space wallet, a self-custodial wallet integrated in the messenger.
The deployment involves two major Ethena integrations, including one in the custodial Wallet in Telegram and the second in the TON Space wallet, a self-custodial wallet integrated in the messenger. [44]
"USDe is coming to all major TON wallets and will be integrated ecosystem-wide. Ethena’s assets are rolling out across the ecosystem, you’ll be able to use USDe in all the same ways as Toncoin or USDUSDe is coming to all major TON wallets and will be integrated ecosystem-wide.Ethena’s assets are rolling out across the ecosystem, you’ll be able to use USDe in all the same ways as Toncoin or USDe" - TON tweeted [45]