What is the TON Cryptocurrency
TON (Telegram Open Network) is a blockchain developed by the creators of Telegram that supports smart contracts. The network is highly scalable, with corresponding speed and low fees, making it an attractive choice in the current environment of less efficient chains. Just a month ago, the average cost of a single Bitcoin transaction reached a historical high of $127.
Initially, TON was developed directly by the Telegram messenger team, who also conducted token sale rounds for the project in early 2018. Eventually, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) intervened, calling the project's token sales transactions with unregistered securities.
At that time, the token was planned to be named Gram, and US citizens participated in the deals. This displeased the SEC, which opposed the pre-sales of tokens amounting to $1.7 billion. As a result, the Telegram team stepped back from the project, paid a fine of $18.5 million, and returned the raised investments. The development of TON on a decentralized basis was then taken over by the community.
The creators of Telegram Open Network emphasize the poor connection between modern blockchains such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and BNB Chain. Although these networks offer good security and user privacy, their speed often leaves much to be desired.
Therefore, the open-source community is working on creating a next-generation network in the form of TON, which was developed as a blockchain for blockchains. This means that Telegram Open Network can scale to increasingly attract new users, conduct transactions, and unite various individual blockchains.
Through TON, a smart contract in one network will be able to exchange data with applications in other blockchains, as well as access files and websites. Project representatives call this approach the unification of the blockchain world with the internet.
Here is a corresponding video describing the features of The Open Network. In general, the project ecosystem consists of the TON blockchain, its virtual machine, payment platform, TON DNS, storage, and TON sites.
At the core of this is the native cryptocurrency Toncoin (TON). As noted on the project’s website, Toncoin will become the future of the currency world and is used for conducting operations in The Open Network, interacting with games and NFTs based on this blockchain, and other platforms, a full list of which is available