Today, more and more new projects are appearing on the cryptocurrency market. Many of them are aimed at the development of the digital payment system and, in the future, the full-scale implementation of the new concept of decentralised finance (DeFi), as well as at the transition to the era of the new Internet – Web 3.0. One of the industry leaders is the TON project, which has passed a difficult journey and is already considered one of the most promising in the crypto community. Let's talk about who created TON, what difficulties the project faced and what opportunities it provides to users right now.
What is TON?
TON (The Open Network) is a third-generation crypto project managed and supported by the independent TON Foundation developer community. TON is an ecosystem of several developing projects and has a large active community of users.
The TON network has an internal token — Toncoin. It is among the top 30 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and it has proven itself as a convenient and fast means of digital payments.
Тoncoin on the cryptocurrency market
Today Toncoin is a promising cryptocurrency, the total capitalization of which since the beginning of trading in August 2021 has reached more than $8 billion by November 2022. The maximum issue is 5 billion coins. Now the project already has 1.4 million active users.
Crypto winter has affected Toncoin, as well as most cryptocurrencies. According to CoinMarketCap, on December 27, 2021, the exchange rate peaked at $4.5 per coin, after which the decline began. Price highs in 2022 are $2.8 on February 10 and $2.3 on April 29. In recent months, the coin has been trading in the range of $0.81-1.95 with a daily trading volume of $5 million. The minimum cryptocurrency exchange rate for the last six months is $0.81. Now the token is in a phase of steady growth.
Toncoin to USD chart on CoinMarketCap.
How TON appeared and became abandoned
TON was originally created as a platform for the development and implementation of decentralized applications (dApps). Its founders were the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, previously known as the creators of the Telegram messenger. The token was then called Gram, and it was supposed to become the internal currency of the messenger. It was assumed that the coin could be used to pay for subscriptions and exclusive content, goods and services.
Telegram is reputable for its focus on the freedom and independence of its users. This is also why the IEO (Initial exchange offering) of Gram coins with the participation of Space Investments Limited and the Liquid crypto exchange in 2018 attracted special interest from investors. Then, within two weeks, the developers managed to raise an unprecedented $1.7 billion in investments. The full implementation of the Gram token in the social network was scheduled for autumn 2019.
The project was stopped after the SEC (the United States Securities and Exchange Commission) interfered with the development. On October 11, 2019, it issued a statement demanding to stop the distribution of cryptocurrency. In June 2020, Gram tokens were alleged as securities, and their turnover became illegal. To protect Telegram's reputation, Pavel Durov in a Telegraph post announced his refusal to further support the project.
Durov wrote: «Unfortunately, we – the 96% of the world’s population living elsewhere – are dependent on decision makers elected by the 4% living in the US».
All TON data became the public domain, and the management was transferred to an independent TON Foundation development team.
The rebirth of TON
At the moment, the TON Foundation is the only official organisation engaged in the development of TON. As a result of an open appeal to the Telegram team, the official domain of the project was transferred to it on August 4, 2021. However, even today Toncoin remains completely decentralised, which means that any token holder can participate in its improvement, and decisions are made through a general vote of independent developers.
The decentralised system at the first stage led to an overabundance of initiatives to modernise the blockchain, so a horizontal structure was introduced in which the community of enthusiasts is divided into departments, each of which is engaged in its own field such as design, blockchain system, and so on. This has had a positive impact on the project and the number of competitions and innovations that are awarded with grants in the equivalent of TON has increased.
TON blockchain technologies
The Toncoin blockchain is based on Ethereum smart contracts and has a sharding support which means that transactions are executed in multithreading mode, or in parallel. This can be compared to opening several cash registers when a queue appears in a supermarket. A similar algorithm was implemented in the blockchain of the Solana coin, which became the fastest cryptocurrency in 2020. High transaction speed (up to 1 million transactions per second!) and the low network fees provided Toncoin with good liquidity in the market. In 2022, Toncoin is already traded on well-known cryptocurrency exchanges such as Huobi Global, KuCoin, Uniswap DEX.
In December 2021, Telegram founder Pavel Durov supported the TON Foundation: «I'm proud that the technology we created is alive and evolving. When it comes to scalability and speed, TON is still years ahead of everything else in the blockchain realm. It would have been a shame to see this project not benefitting humanity».
The entire planned issue for Toncoin is 5 billion coins. When distributing tokens, mining (an algorithm as a result of which users receive cryptocurrency in exchange for providing computing power to a computer) was not originally expected. Such an opportunity appeared only after Pavel Durov left the project.
The TON Foundation team did not re-conduct the initial offering of coins. Instead, all tokens were placed in smart contracts of a parallel network running on the IPOW (Initial Proof-of-Work) consensus algorithm . This allowed users to mine coins that were distributed evenly and thereby protected the network from centralization.
Toncoin mining officially ended on June 28, 2022, and the entire TON blockchain network switched to the PoS (Proof-of-Stake) consensus algorithm. Now the key role in belongs to validators, which are users who run the software. They maintain the security of the network and execute transactions, receiving a reward for it. TON holders can earn money by stacking (transferring or storing coins), when they either participate in the support of the network themselves, or transfer their funds to trusted validators.
How to store Toncoin
One of the main advantages of the TON project for ordinary users is its simplicity. To use Toncoin, you do not need to go through a long and complicated registration. Any user can create their own wallet directly in the Telegram messenger, using the @wallet bot. The wallet will be integrated into the attachments section, so in the future it will be no more difficult to send tokens to your contacts than to send a photo or geolocation. It is important to keep in mind that the bot wallet is custodial, which means it is not 100% secure for storing tokens.
Wallets for storing cryptocurrencies can be custodial and non-custodial. Custodial means storing private access keys at third parties (often these are crypto exchanges). When using non-custodial wallets, only the users know the access keys and are fully responsible for their own funds.
The best wallets for TON are created by the developers and members of the Toncoin community. The full list can be seen in the wallets section on the official website. Non-custodial wallets are considered the most secure. Let's name a few of the most popular.
🔒 Tonkeeper is a multi-currency wallet from the developers of The Open Network. The wallet has advanced functionality: users can buy TON directly in it, store it and some other well-known cryptocurrencies, for example, Bitcoin and Etherium. Here you can also connect to staking. Toonkeeper is one of the few wallets supporting the storage and exchange of tokens of the unique collection of NFT TON Diamonds.
👛 TON Wallet is a new version of Gram Wallet. It has several versions: an application for PC (Windows, Linux, macOS) and mobile (Android and iOS), an extension for browsers. It allows you to store and transfer TON coins, and also integrates with most dApps and projects based on the TON blockchain.
📱 Tonhub is a popular mobile wallet for Android and iOS. The developers have focused on the security and complete anonymity for users of the network. A special feature of Tonhub is the ability to connect to staking in Tonwhales pools (unifications of investors' coins) right inside the app.
We have prepared for you instructions on how to create two popular wallets for storing Toncoin: using the @wallet bot in Telegram and in the Tonkeeper app. Be sure to use it when you register a crypto wallet for the first time, so as not to miss important details!
TON ecosystem
TON actively supports the introduction of new projects into its ecosystem. The Toncoin cryptocurrency is a connecting link for all of them, allowing different dApps to interact with each other. Let's take a closer look at the most recognizable and promising projects from the TON team.
🏠 Ton Storage is an extension of the network offering users a web platform for data storage. In fact, Ton Storage is a decentralised file sharing service, an analogue of such well-known file hosting services as Dropbox or Filecoin. Its feature is full integration with Toncoin. The data is stored in the blockchain network in encoded form, and only the owner of the crypto wallet synchronised with the account can get access to it.
🌐 TON Proxy. The innovation of the TON team is in an attempt to create, right today, its own Internet network that meets all the standards of the concept of the Internet of the future Web 3.0. Developers are creating an environment for their Internet, which will become completely anonymous and decentralised. TON proxies are digital entry points to an independent network that you can connect by yourself. For example, the TOR shadow Internet project allows you to join it through a special browser. The sites of the TON network can be easily accessed only by reconfiguring the proxy server connection.
There are two updates provided for this project. Proxy 2.0 will allow you to completely mask the IP addresses of sites and network users, and will provide anonymity and data protection. Proxy 3.0 plans to introduce the decentralised finance economy (DeFi) to the future Internet. Payment for the use of the network will be made through integration with a crypto wallet.
📃 TON DNS. In order to develop the Internet of the future, it will require the creation of new sites, and therefore domains. An auction of domain names «.ton» is currently taking place inside the TON project. You can buy your own domain at it, for example, «itez.ton», which will become the address of your site in the Web3 TON Internet network. You can also link your wallet to the domain name: then another user will be able to send you coins by simply specifying the domain address as the recipient.
💳 TON Payments. The project is a single payment system that will allow users and DeFi platforms to exchange tokens without fees and speed limits. TON Payments is based on smart contracts. You can avoid network commission by generating a unique payment channel for two users. You will only need to pay for setting up a smart contract when creating a channel and when closing it.
💎 TON Diamonds. One of the bright products of TON is the decentralised NFT marketplace TON Diamonds, where users can participate in online auctions, buy and sell collections of the best digital artists in the world. The most famous is the TON Diamonds collection, which is a set of 10,000 NFT in the form of animated diamonds. As in real life, each diamond has unique external characteristics, emphasises the status of the owner and is a pass to the private zone of token holders. The collection has a high total capitalization of 5 million TON, and the price of tokens is constantly growing and today varies from 48 to 1.2 million TON ($83–20.7 million) per diamond.
The project community, in addition to the projects listed above, is actively developing dApps based on smart contracts and compatible with the TON blockchain. You can see most of them on the TON Apps. There are already NFT marketplaces, utility tools, online games and social networks. The unification of all existing crypto platforms in a single Web 3.0 space is one of the main goals of TON developers.
How to get TON
Since Toncoin is fully issued, TON Foundation does not conduct airdrops. However, some crypto platforms and exchanges can still announce token distributions. You can track information about such promotions via specialised sites, for example, Airdrops or Airdrophome. In addition, you can receive TON regularly by becoming a network validator or by contributing your assets to the staking pool. You can start staking in the Validators section on the official TON website or with the help of crypto wallets, which we mentioned above.
The easiest way to get a TON token is to buy it. You can make a purchase for fiat using our convenient itez service. There you can buy Toncoin for Euros, Dollars, Swedish krona, Brazilian real, Vietnamese dong and 30+ other national currencies in a matter of minutes with a regular bank card.
How to use Toncoin
Like most proven cryptocurrencies, Toncoin can be used to pay for goods and services on the Internet. TON is a relatively young project, and now it is only being integrated into popular exchanges and payment systems, so for now it is most convenient to use the coin inside the ecosystem.
Official and independent Toncoin developers are actively introducing new services and dApps. Among them are NFT exchange and creation platforms, social networks, online games and many other interesting and promising projects. In most cases TON becomes their internal currency.
Is TON a good investment
Today TON is one of the most promising projects. In a short period since the launch of the new version of the network in 2021, the coin has managed to gain a capitalization of $8 billion. TON stands out from other projects by a close-knit community of developers who quickly implement new technological solutions. The unique scalability and security indicators of the network form the prerequisites for the imminent introduction of the token on most trading exchanges and other crypto platforms, which will provide it with good liquidity.
The special feature of Toncoin is the purposeful development of the digital ecosystem, which assumes the rapid implementation of the most popular technologies in the crypto industry. Among them are GameFi, DeFi tools, technologies of the anonymous and decentralised Internet of the future Web 3.0. This, combined with the close interest from the entire crypto community, gives TON an advantage in the market and allows us to assume an increase in the value of the coin in the future.
This article is not an investment recommendation. The financial transactions mentioned in the article are not a guide to action. Itez is not responsible for possible risks. The user should independently conduct an analysis on the basis of which it will be possible to draw conclusions and make decisions about making any operations with cryptocurrency.
