TON Analysis | FTX lists the community-driven Telegram blockchain, how does it differ from the other fork, Free TON? Let TON member Chen Bowei tell you!

Remember the blockchain project TON from the encrypted messaging software? After the founder announced refunds and discontinued updates to TON following a lawsuit by the US SEC for violating securities laws with its token (GRAM) fundraising last year, independent developers picked up the original database and continued development under the TON name. The TON token was also listed on FTX last Friday. So, what is this TON project? How is it different from the original?

The blockchain project TON (Telegram Open Network) from the encrypted messaging software Telegram raised a total of $1.7 billion in 2018, making it the second-largest ICO fundraising in history. However, the following year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Telegram for violating securities laws with the GRAM token, and eventually founder Pavel Durov announced the cessation of TON updates in a farewell message.

The SEC regulated TON with the "highest standards," and the court ruled that the native token GRAM of TON could not be issued in the US or anywhere globally, as US citizens might find other ways to access TON on the platform. After Telegram ceased support for the test network (testnet2), independent developers took over the test network.

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TON vs. Free TON

According to the Prime Paper released by TON, developers Anatoliy Makosov and Emelyanenkok initiated the Newton open-source community after Telegram stopped supporting testnet2. They continued the development of testnet2, and more developers joined the community thereafter.

After researching the TON whitepaper's architecture and code, the Newton community continued with the original plan outlined in the whitepaper. Subsequently, the community voted to rename itself the mainnet and the Newton community to the TON Foundation, continuing development under the name TON. However, TON stands for The Open Network, not Telegram Open Network.

However, TON is not just one.

In early May last year, when the verdict on the TON's GRAM fundraising case was still pending, technical partner TON Labs decided not to wait for Telegram to resolve regulatory issues and released a forked version called "Free TON" (now renamed Everscale), with the token named "TON Crystal (abbreviated as TON)". The token has been listed on several exchanges, including CEX, DigiFinex, Kuna, and introduced DeFi features in August this year, such as trading and NFT services.

TON Labs also recently released a new Free TON whitepaper, claiming to bring significant changes to the original TON blockchain philosophy and code, elevating Telegram founder Pavel Durov's concept of freedom to a new level.

TON Chinese representative Chen Bowei (awesome_doge) pointed out that Free TON is a forked version of the original TON, with its own whitepaper and code different from the original. TON, on the other hand, inherited the original testnets after being renamed the mainnet, including the code, marking the biggest difference between the two.

Furthermore, the two tokens have slightly different distribution methods.

The total supply of Free TON tokens is 5 billion, with 85% allocated for free distribution to TON partners and users, 10% to developers, and 5% to validation nodes.

After being renamed the mainnet from the testnet, TON generated 5 billion TON tokens, with 1.45% allocated to developers and testers, while the rest is used for mining.

In summary, currently there are two versions of TON: Free TON and TON.

Free TON is a forked version of the original TON, managed by TON Labs, with the token TON Crystal and its own whitepaper; whereas the TON listed on FTX inherited the original TON's testnet (renamed the mainnet) and is supported by the TON Foundation (formerly known as Newton).

Key Components of the TON Network

The core goal of the TON platform is to make value transactions as simple as exchanging messages, so TON was designed with a strong focus on transaction speed and scalability.

Chen Bowei, the Chinese representative of TON, stated that the TPS (transactions per second) of the TON mainnet reaches a million-level, a data verified through stress testing. Currently, there are more than 130 nodes worldwide, and for a new blockchain, the speed and decentralization performance are quite good.

Chen Bowei explained that the core of the TON platform is the TON blockchain, which features a scalable and flexible architecture with a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and "infinite sharding" technology to achieve a million-level TPS. The blockchain can automatically split and merge to adapt to load changes, and block generation is not affected by transaction volume.

One major advantage of TON, according to Chen Bowei, is the absence of a painful transition from proof of work to proof of stake consensus, while still maintaining decentralization.

"Because the U.S. government prohibited the GRAM token, developers transferred the remaining tokens from the testnet (98.55% of the total supply, 4.927 billion tokens) to the Proof-of-Work Giver smart contract for users to mine. Those with a certain amount of tokens are eligible to be nodes, allowing TON to retain the advantages of proof of work decentralization while starting directly with proof of stake consensus."

With a million-level TPS, TON naturally can handle payment functions without requiring high transaction fees. Additionally, Chen Bowei mentioned that TON's structure is quite comprehensive.

He further explained that The Open Network consists of TON Blockchain, TON Payment, TON Proxy, TON DNS, TON Storage, TON Service, and TON Workchains.

TON Payment will be released in Q4 this year, operating similarly to the Bitcoin Lightning Network. TON Service is the infrastructure for general user use, currently offering online mining, data monitoring, and will have basic code packages for DApps in the future.

TON Proxy is like a decentralized VPN. VPNs establish encrypted channels for data, hide IP addresses to protect network connections, online privacy, and identities. Chen Bowei stated that besides decentralized network routing, websites can be hosted on it, even the dark web, with the website's public key serving as the site's address for users to visit.

TON Storage is TON's IPFS.

Chen Bowei explained that blockchain storage space is limited or expensive, so developers face storage issues. For instance, most NFT data is stored in IPFS, and many DApps' structures, data, even videos are also stored in IPFS.

On Ethereum, most of this data is stored on top of IPFS, which is an additional layer and not native to Ethereum, whereas TON comes with its own storage space.

Furthermore, TON also features an oracle, making it easy to receive external data, facilitating cross-chain DeFi operations.

Chen Bowei believes that the comprehensive architecture is one of TON's strengths, stating:

"TON has several advantages. First, it is fast in transaction speed, and second, TON's architecture is quite comprehensive. It has already designed storage space and Proxy (TON proxy server) from the beginning. Other blockchains started with only pricing, and these essential infrastructures were gradually built later, but TON already had them written in the roadmap from the start, making its development potential greater."

Interested readers can refer to:

1. TON Chinese official channel:https://t.me/ton_zh
2. TON Chinese official community:https://t.me/toncoin_zh