TON is the future of Solana and here's why

This article is a translation from Russian, strange or outdated moments have been cut out. There are no global changes here.

Original article is here

***

Let's start from the beginning, with something personal. How I skipped TON because it's trash. (clickbait)

It all started with GRAM. Durov, a genius, came up with his own crypto, $GRAM, with full integration into Telegram, raising a record-breaking (at the time) 1.7 billion evergreens in his ICO. 2018 Bitcoin was in the dumps, and the media were laughing at crypto enthusiasts.

October 2019 Telegram was buzzing with headlines about the SEC and Durov. The gist of it was that regulators threw a wrench into GRAM’s wheels. They hit Telegram, hit Durov, and then threw in another hit on top. And in May 2020, Telegram was officially DONE lost/gave up and complied with the requirements: GRAM was canceled, the blockchain project was shut down, and blockchain integration into Telegram was discontinued.

And then, two projects appeared Free TON and TON Foundation (The Open Network) each launching its own blockchain with its own GRAM (TON). And you need to understand: back then, and even now, I don’t believe that Durov walked away and wasn't involved in the chain. But the two parallel developments looked really weird.

At that time, I had just gotten into crypto, just started accumulating BTC, working in Web3, and buying up Zcash and XMR as the stronghold of true decentralization. And for me, GRAM, Waves, and similar projects were trash. Who even needed this? And the whole TON story looked like pure cringe to me

But there's a fine line between love and hate.But there's a fine line between love and hate.

You have to understand I live in Telegram and actively hang out (or at least try to) in crypto communities. I went through the WEB3 X-MAS quests from A to Z, which gave away NFT-based goods on TON. This was at the end of 2023, and I got deeply involved in using TON. I even traded an NFT for a top-tier Web3 sweater what more could you want?

I was surprised by the activity and cool projects in the ecosystem, but I was still very skeptical. The launch of @wallet didn’t impress me much. Even the fact that a friend stole my username on GetGems didn’t bother me I wasn’t planning to stick around anyway.And then came Notcoin, Catizen, Blum. Meme coins, cool NFT collections, celebrities, games, farming, and, of course, airdrops! But alright, I’m being a bit dishonest DeDust came a little earlier. It gave me the motivation to research the network, explore new TON projects, and introduce them to my audience.

Did I become a TON influencer?

At some point, TON climbed to the top 2-3 spots in my portfolio, and my channel’s content shifted: from deployments → retro → EVM/SOL alpha topics → TON.For me, the choice was obvious. DeDust pools with boosts were feeding generously, tap-to-earn apps (to my surprise) were giving out solid airdrops, as was Open League with its hidden drops. I even managed to pull off a few multipliers on a shitcoin with gas.pump first by getting into its scam clone, then into the original. All of this was way more interesting than yet another restaking protocol with a trash-tier shitcoin.

And here we are at this point of market apathy and boredom. Meanwhile, TON just keeps growing, and in my crypto journey, it’s pretty much the only ecosystem where things are actually happening.

What is TON, technically speaking?

Let’s start with a somewhat amusing (in my opinion) fact: in TON, it's impossible to precisely calculate the transaction fee in advance. Instead, you send an amount of up to 0.35 TON, and then receive the leftover balance after the transaction is processed. The final cost can range anywhere from 0.0001 TON to 0.35 TON.

And yet, it's the cheapest and fastest blockchain. Let’s lock that in.

Why is that?

The Open Network (TON) by TON Foundation operates based on two key technologies (or principles, if you prefer):

Sharding – When the network experiences high load, it starts creating/splitting into shardchains. When the load decreases, the number of shardchains reduces. The whole point of sharding is to evenly distribute the load on validators, allowing the network to handle more transactions and process them faster. Each shard requires at least one network validator, and currently, there are 398 validators in the network. More validators = more possible shardchains (with a theoretical limit of 2^60 shards).

Workchains – These are separate "sub-chains" that power the entire TON network. You could even call them full-fledged blockchains within the main chain TON’s take on modularity. These are literally different chains, each handling specific blockchain functions. Currently, two workchains are active: Basechain – Handles our transactions, Masterchain – Stores critical data, such as network configuration and other workchains.

Conceptually, this is similar to L2 scaling, but with full decentralization. In theory, up to 2³² workchains can be launched. The requirements for launching one:

1. Develop your own chain.
2. Get approval from ⅔ of network validators.

So far, there hasn’t been a need to create a new workchain, and it’s unclear if one will be needed in the future. Personally, I’d love to see a GameFi workchain, which could make on-chain games in TON ultra-fast.

Another important technical feature

TON is not compatible with EVM/Ethereum it supports its own types of Turing-complete smart contracts. Contracts must be written in one of the available languages (FunC, Tact, or Fift), and their architecture is significantly different from EVM contracts. This is the TON Virtual Machine (TVM). Just an intro for the tech-savvy, but what matters to us is this:

TVM has the following features:

- Everything in TON operates through messages. There are internal messages (between smart contracts/Dapps) and external messages (from users to smart contracts). The key point is that internal messages can trigger new messages and can also be canceled. They function almost like traditional smart contracts.

- Incoming and outgoing transactions are completely separate processes, handled independently and in parallel by the blockchain. There is a sequence of messages, for example, to lock your TON in Bemo and issue you stTON. Lock, issue, redeem, repeat.

Each of these actions is a separate transaction. So TON is a system built on independent steps (transactions), making it highly flexible and scalable.

And another thing everything here is a smart contract, including your wallet. Fun fact.

So what does all this give us?

THE BEST BLOCKCHAIN IN THE WORLD! (or not, just the author’s subjective opinion)

It has the potential for infinite scalability and network stability, keeping transactions fast and cheap. It doesn’t always work perfectly, but hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

To emphasize TON, de jure, can scale with new workchains without suffering from liquidity fragmentation or audience splitting. But the existing sharding mechanism should be more than enough. It doesn’t need L2s or L3s. Although, interestingly, there are EVM-compatible L2 networks on TON.

So where do the delays and blockchain failures come from?

TON is so fast that it outruns transaction execution speed (joke). Its clever technical design solves network scalability issues but creates other problems.

TON processes transactions asynchronously. This means some transactions may end up in different blocks, which can break the sequence of message execution if one depends on another. As a result, a smart contract might fail with an error.

A shardchain can fall under the responsibility of slow or bad validators. You get moved to another shard for speed, but for you personally, it might actually slow things down.When network load spikes suddenly, shardchains can’t keep up. Remember the DOGS airdrop? The network literally crashed under the pressure, something it wasn’t used to back then. It had to be restarted :)

But there's one more reason, and it’s purely ironic. Because transactions are fast and cheap, the network is full of spam. For every real transaction, there are about two junk ones.

Oh, my dear and respected reader. This is the beauty of our people’s chain it actually has something to offer. In my opinion, it’s the new Solana, following an eerily similar path. A rich kid’s personal toy that got played with a little too much. Technology that works on schedule, while the crowd yells, "Who even needs this trash?"

A Record-Breaking 900 Million Monthly Users!

No blockchain in the world can boast such numbers. No one even comes close in terms of potential traffic or rather, already integrated traffic into an ecosystem. TON & Durov keep making headlines, people are tapping their hamsters and waiting for airdrops like Notcoin.

At the same time, they’re reading and writing news, sending stickers to family and friends, and spamming garbage in the comments users from India, Russia, Indonesia, the USA (over 26 million!), Brazil, and Egypt. Think about this number and consider the potential for Western expansion. And with that expansion comes the onboarding of new users into crypto.

And the West is looking at TON. How about this: Pantera Capital called its investment in TON the largest in the fund’s history. In case you didn’t know, Pantera is one of the first and largest venture firms specializing in crypto investments.

Or take the fact that on Moni Discover, you can already find Western influencers, alpha hunters, and builders people genuinely interested in TON projects.

And among these projects, some are also built on Solana, Base, or Ethereum because Telegram itself is an incredibly convenient tool and a natural hub for users. But other chains have zero native integration.

Mini apps in Telegram are like farcaster frames

A simple but highly effective solution that captures your mind before you even realize its full potential. Back in early March 2024, I wrote a review about this, blown away by the possibilities. And now I’ve fully grasped it…The new tab system for web apps at the bottom of your screen creates a fully integrated experience. It lets you mix everything creation, communication, content consumption seamlessly with games, tools, and essential websites.

At the same time, web apps have evolved, pushing the ecosystem into a new meta. 

Trading bots have become full-fledged tools

Now your trading bot, swap service, or wallet-tracking tool can have a modern UI/UX and intuitive controls, all accessible directly inside Telegram.
Tap-to-earn apps in Telegram are the new gold rush
A goldmine of massive and cheap traffic, riding the golden retro narrative that’s once again capturing the minds of crypto traders, degens, and normies. A return to the roots games in VK.

TON has a solid DeFi scene

The launch of native USDT came with huge APR boosts, making it easy to farm insane yields. And let's not even start on the NOT pools.

We already have lending protocols and liquid staking, so let’s mention one of the best combinations:

BEMO – Restaking protocol 

EVAA Protocol – Lending protocol 

Deposit TON into BEMO to receive stTON, then lend stTON to EVAA and borrow TON, repeating the cycle if needed.

A whole system of seasonal airdrops within Open League

The official website has all the necessary info.

Open league website

Once, I wrote a very short article about Open League, not realizing just how much of a hidden gem it was. Every season brings new rules a focus on different market segments, audiences, grant conditions, and funding amounts. Right now, through SBT badges in Ton Society, you can farm Normie and Degen points across two separate airdrops.

These campaigns heavily incentivize people to play, explore, and degen. There were even hidden airdrops, where they hinted at a specific market segment/protocols, and later rewarded participants like $7K for burning $500 in gas. Can your zkSync or L0 do that?

The goal is simple bring in a new audience. It’s marketing, folks.

They’ve allocated $115 million for projects and users. Since Season 0 (pilot) through Season 6 (ongoing), they’ve been distributing funds sometimes $1M, sometimes $3.275M. It’s all public, structured as competitions and retroactive airdrops.

So far, over $40M has been distributed, which means there’s still plenty left to grab.

And despite a number of cringe decisions and bad PR from TON Foundation, they’ve definitely achieved results.

10x growth in TON holders since 2021 and a 1372% increase in network TVL. A clear boost from April 2023 to summer 2024. +2400% in unique addresses.

June 14, 2024 – TON surpassed Ethereum in daily active wallets with 577,848 wallets! And it’s not just Sybils it includes casual users onboarding through tap-to-earn apps.

TON hosts over 650 dApps. As of April 2024, DeFi TVL exceeded $160 million, according to Bitget, which, along with OKX, is actively expanding its presence here.

These posts performed 10-20x better than my usual content, especially in shares. Though, to be fair, my audience isn’t that large yet.

This means Open League isn’t just burning money they’re successfully pushing TON as the fastest, most scalable, and most fun blockchain. And most importantly, it’s a blockchain for the people.   

Conclusions: Is the bull run of 2025+ driven by TON? Quite possible.

You can’t hide a needle in a haystack.

TON solved scalability issues only to create new ones for itself. But overall, it works no worse than Solana on average.

TON has a sketchy supply distribution. Over 90% of the supply is concentrated in 2-3 wallets, yet it still holds its $13-14 billion market cap just fine.

TON has a cringy vibe due to its ugly but popular tap-to-earn apps. But at the same time, there are plenty of beautiful, well-designed games and applications.

Non-atomic transactions those internal and external messages. Some logical operations might end up in different blocks, execute late, or even fail. Or everything could go smoothly.

Developer difficulties. The FunC smart contract language is hard to learn and use, though some devs actually like it.

But what matters to me is what we have in the end.

This is the most accessible, insanely fun, and well-proven blockchain. For us, CIS builders, working on it is a pleasure. I’ve been (or still am) involved in some projects here, talk to development teams, and hold Durev and Balls.