Everybody is making a token. Telegram too gave it a shot. But as we know any company these days that tries to act like security or stablecoin needs to pass through SEC, or else they get shut down. And same happens with Telegram. They had to turn down their project.
Then some developers from the Telegram decided to form a non profit project called "The Open Network". This non profit is not trying to be a security but going to be a blockchain for the messengers users and the people who want to use the token in the app and also outside it for variety of the smart contract usage.
Why should we care about TON? If you are a telegram app user, you may find it's use in near future within the app. And there would be easier way to use the coin within the ecosystems which are developed by Telegram and people who picked it up for the dApps.
So in this post, I wish to cover how the Toncoin works. And things that you as an consumer needs to know about.
Open Network (TON) Blockchain
The open network has a blockchain which is a layer 1 smart contract network like Solana and Ethereum. So everything that you can do with the Ethereum, you can do with the TON blockchain. You can also use this chain for creating tokens, be it fungible or non fungible. This makes it a good alternative to Ethereum.
Though being alternative and being the real value chain is something yet to be proven. Like Ethereum this chain too makes use of the proof of stake now. And it has support for the sharding and virtual machine support, which is a part of their consensus algorithm too. Something that makes this chain a bit better alternative in times to come.
Telegram and TON
2018 when this project launched the TON, it was under legal battle with SEC. But in 2021, it was revived and also the project managed to keep all the parts open and under the foundation which makes it free from the telegram or the corporate connections as they say. So far the takers for that point are less.
In 2023, there are some of the official speakers from telegram who said they don't have the legal control over the chain and everything is free and open as of now. And in near future we can see if that turns out to be true considering a lot of chains are under corporate control so we don't find out till it bursts. So far price is decent so we tend to ignore it.
Things You Should Know
TON coin has travelled a lot of miles before it can set few facts straight up in for us. For example, TON has the tokenomics of the 5.1 million and you can see they are being accepted on kuCoin, Houbi, Bitfinex and also the swap site UNISWAP. You would find more of such being supported in more exchanges and swaps soon.
TON ecosystem is governed by the TON foundation, they have ton.vote website for the proposal voting, they do have their own litepaper for the documentation of the token. Also there is independent audit process that has validated the claims of the TON foundation on how they work in the process.
As explained earlier there is a proof of stake consensus system and also there is virtual machine and the sharding support like an Ethereum blockchain. The ecosystem happens to supports the TON Storage and the TON DNS along with other dApps in proxies and sites services. So it seems like the app and smart contract system is in motion.
Toncoin is going to be integrated in variety of the socialFi applications and the messengers. The way it has demonstrated it's usage in the Telegram already has proves it's validity and the use case effectively. A lot more things from the TON are in the motion, we just have to wait to see where this chain takes off.