HitBTC is thrilled to announce the listing of TON that has started on the 17th of December at 12pm UTC. Launched in May 2020 by a group of top independent POS validators, Free TON is a high-performance decentralized community-driven network. TON will be listed with BTC and USDT trading pairs.

What is Free TON?

Free TON is a community-powered movement for a free and open decentralised internet. It’s a next-gen blockchain technology that belongs to no one and to everyone at the same time. The network does not have an owner or centralized management that decides what should be done or when, nor what tools or projects should run on it. Instead, Free TON practices decentralized governance principles empowering the community to engage, contribute, and make decisions. 

Technology-wise Free TON is the first multi-threaded, multi-sharded, highly scalable blockchain with low latency. It has an advanced Proof-of-Stake consensus and versatile smart contract platform supporting several high-level computer languages. Free TON promotes a unique concept of End-to-End Decentralization.

Free TON never had nor intends to have any token sales. Instead, the Free TON community practices a meritocratic token distribution model where ton crystal tokens are distributed for free to the community against the contribution to the ecosystem. It is done either through contests (never grants that mean centralized decision making) or through collaboration proposals with partners who want to enable their use case on the Free TON network. 

Free TON as of Dec 17 has 385 validators and will exceed  400 validators by the time of an anticipated mainnet announcement scheduled for December 22, 2020. This makes Free TON the most decentralized PoS network. Importantly, these validators were chosen through a series of contests in Q3 2020 where teams were competing on performance. 

Why should one choose TON?

Free TON values are centered around respect for personal data privacy and a firm belief in freedom of speech, free information sharing, and free software. Free TON is a high-tech project with a strong underlying infrastructure and development plan. It claims to be the fastest blockchain currently, with the highest throughput and lowest latency. This enables it to compete with centralized IT architectures on performance and UI/UX, yet bringing the benefits of the blockchain on top of that, which has never really been possible before. 

Free TON also boasts several big corporate partners within the community, these consist of companies and entities like WorldChess, Combot, AdGram, Chatex, Cointelegraph, Playkey, China play, and many more. Other partners can be found here.

Key Differences between TON & Free TON

Key differences between the original vision of TON and the Free TON as it stands today can be summarized in three key statements:

  • No corporate entity behind – Telegram as a messaging platform and as a business has publicly abstained from being involved further. Today, the community is both the founding fathers and the key asset of the Free TON as an ecosystem.
  • The protocol is built upon the ideals of decentralization upon both, the network and the governance layer.
  • Distributional decentralization – the distribution of tokens happens as this is being written on a per-merit basis based on the proposals that are submitted on the Free TON Community Forum and voted for by the community and the validators.

Strong Endorsement

The HitBTC team said they were delighted to have TON crystal tokens listed on their exchange, adding:

"This is another step forward for a decentralized world and we're happy to be a part of it.”

Meanwhile, Free TON’s community voice sub governance said:

“We are happy to see TON crystal tokens listed on HitBTC.com and we thank them for believing in the technology, governance model, and potential of Free TON.”

About HitBTC

HitBTC is a crypto exchange with over 800 trading pairs. The platform was created in 2013 and provides exchange, custodial, and other related services. Despite its long tenure in the crypto space, HitBTC has remained one of the few exchanges whose security has never been compromised. HitBTC offers a range of APIs such as REST, WebSocket, and FIX API. The exchange’s UI was developed to meet the needs of the most demanding and sophisticated traders.

About Free TON

Free TON is a community-powered movement for a free and open decentralised internet. It’s a next-gen blockchain technology that belongs to no one and to everyone at the same time. The network does not have an owner or centralized management that decides what should be done or when, nor what tools or projects should run on it. Instead, Free TON practices decentralized governance principles empowering the community to engage, contribute, and make decisions. Technology-wise Free TON is the first multi-threaded, multi-shared, highly scalable blockchain with low latency. It has an advanced Proof-of-Stake consensus and versatile smart contract platform supporting several high-level computer languages. Free TON promotes a unique concept of End-to-End Decentralization.