“TON is intended for millions of users, and one of our goals is to make the use of blockchain no more complicated than using applications that users are used to.” — TON Foundation representative
Though its journey began just in 2018, The Open Network — or TON, for short — is a layer-1 blockchain with an eventful story. It started with Telegram, a digital messaging platform founded by Nikolai and Pavel Durov. The platform’s founders and team set out to build Telegram its own blockchain, naming it the Telegram Open Network, or TON.
After conducting a private sale for the blockchain’s GRAM tokens, securing $1.7 billion in 2018, Telegram launched two blockchain testnets in 2019. That same year, Telegram was faced with action from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, with the regulator claiming the private sale was an unregistered securities offering.
Telegram ended up settling with the SEC in 2020, which included giving approximately $1.2 billion back to investors and paying a fine of $18.5 million. Although Telegram did not continue with the project, a group of developers — who later became the TON Foundation — took over work on the TON blockchain. “Testnet2,” the second of TON’s two testnets launched in 2019, became TON’s mainnet. The TON blockchain is now called The Open Network but still uses the TON abbreviation. Its native cryptocurrency is called Toncoin.
In April, TON announced that the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo were considering using TON to deploy products intended to bolster their economies. The triad of countries each expressed interest in using the blockchain in various ways, such as to build a national stablecoin and for payment solutions.
April also saw the project announce a $250 million fund called TONcoin Fund, which included investments from KuCoin Ventures, Huobi Incubator and others. Aimed at helping projects building on the TON blockchain, the fund was announced as a partner of the TON Foundation.
Although the TON blockchain operates as a proof-of-stake network, it was initially possible to mine via proof-of-work because Telegram placed assets from its initial distribution in smart contracts in 2020 following its legal battle, with the assets then available via mining. Mining concluded in June 2022 with all coins mined, and now the blockchain is solely proof-of-stake.
Also in 2022, the TON Foundation unveiled a domain name system based on the TON blockchain, calling it TON DNS. Additionally, Telegram opened a marketplace on the TON blockchain for buying and selling Telegram usernames.
TON had a fairly eventful 2022, with entities looking to work with the network, the launch of TONcoin Fund and more. The TON Foundation got off to a hot start early in 2023, unveiling a digital storage solution based on the blockchain, called TON Storage.
TON will continue in 2023 as a PoS-only network. Moreover, 2023 might yield further headlines related to the blockchain as new projects and entities look into the network and use it for various purposes. TON DNS might also gain prevalence as a human-readable wallet addre
